Tsubame's Turning
by persephonesfolly
Summary: Complete. Tsubame wakes to a horrifying realization. Will Yahiko help her cope, or hunt her down as ordered? AU Vampire story.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: All characters belong to the great Watsuki except for any OC that might creep in.

CHAPTER ONE

Tsubame woke slowly. Her first thought was that her sheets felt funny. They were slick and smooth, instead of the soft much-washed cotton she was used to. Her fingers slid across the fitted sheet beneath her. It was silk.

Her eyes cracked open. She saw that the sheets were cream, not white. They weren't her sheets at all. The next thing she realized is that she was naked.

Sitting up abruptly, she felt her head reeling, and clutched the flat sheet to her chest. She winced as pain shot through her head, and other areas of her body. Where was she? How had she got here? Squinting, she found herself in a wood paneled bedroom, on a low bed with cream sheets and a sage green duvet. The light was diffused, foggy. Turning to look over her shoulder, she saw that the four panes of the window at her back had been painted white, like a shoji screen, so no direct sunlight came through, only a muted glow.

Thinking back desperately, all she could come up with were disjointed memories of work friends dragging her to a club called the Nightshade on the Friday of her birthday weekend to 'loosen her up'. She'd been surprised; she'd thought they didn't like her much. She'd never been clubbing with her co-workers before. She kept to herself in the accounting department and was scrupulously honest, which made her unpopular since she refused to cover expenses that weren't business expenses.

At the club, Meg had gone to the bar and bought them all drinks, and Tsubame had drunk it to be polite, trusting that Meg and Sara would watch out for her and see her home. She didn't know it was possible to get drunk on one drink, but how else explain how they'd dragged her onto the dance floor and how she'd ended up dancing with a gorgeous stranger?

It started to get really hazy after that. She remembered a slow dance, the stranger's hands on her back, staring up into the most handsome face she'd ever seen before. She remembered wondering how she'd ended up in the arms of someone as gorgeous as him.

Suddenly Tsubame realized she wasn't alone in the bed. She swung her head slowly to the right, and saw the man she'd been dancing with. He had shoulder length dark hair, and a smooth planed face relaxed with sleep. The other end of the sheet mercifully covered him from his lower chest to his ankles.

More memory fragments come back, bits and pieces of last night, touches, sensations, sounds, smells, soreness. None of the memories were complete, or even in the right order, but it was all too clear what had happened.

Tsubame felt her eyes filling with tears, and crossed her arms over her chest, hunching over in horror. As she cradled herself, her fingertips touched crusted blood on her neck. Another memory comes back – fangs, real ones, extra long white teeth terminating in a sharp point, and pinpoints of pain at her neck, a sucking feeling. Her neck felt bruised where he'd bit her. It felt like the time she'd been bitten by a rattlesnake and rushed to the hospital on a camping trip, only the puncture wounds were further apart.

Her breath caught in her throat. She stumbled out of bed, tripping on the sheets, but managed to catch herself before she fell. Where were her clothes?

She saw pink cotton on the floor by her feet and snatched up her panties, pulling them on with shaking fingers. Her bra was nowhere to be found, but her slip was lying across the corner of the bed, so she pulled that on as well.

Aware that she'd been sobbing out loud as she dressed, she stole a glance at the figure on the bed, but the man (vampire?) slept on.

She opened the bedroom door and found herself in a sort of hall area between a kitchen on the left and a living area on the right. A man's shirt and other clothing lay scattered between the hallway and living area. Her purse lay on the floor by the backside of a sofa. Grabbing it, she took out her powder compact and opened it. Clearly reflected in the mirror were the telltale fang marks on her neck, two red holes scabbed over with crusted blood.

So that memory was true. Tsubame let the knowledge sink in as she slowly closed the compact. She had to think logically.

She'd been bitten by a vampire; a creature she hadn't believed existed outside of movie theaters. Since she could see herself in the mirror, she obviously hadn't changed into one yet, but she probably would soon since the vampire didn't drain all her blood outright and kill her. Vague memories of books and films reminded her that the victim had to die first then wake up as a vampire. But was that true?

She dropped the compact on the floor and walked numbly over to a small round kitchen table, situated directly to the left of the bedroom. Sinking into a lattice backed wooden chair that wobbled slightly, she put her head in her hands and forced herself to come up with a plan.

Katsu woke to find his bedroom door open and the pain of burning in his little toe. Starting up with a snarl, he bared his fangs. He wondered how sunlight got into his room since he bought the place because the long hallway from the front door to the bedroom ensured that even if the front door was left open in the late afternoon, the sun couldn't reach that far. He'd painted over the windowpanes of the two small windows of his bedroom to be doubly sure no direct sunlight could enter his room.

Squinting, he saw a female figure through the doorway of his room, standing in the sunlight from the open front door. In one hand was a stick or a bar held at her side. In the other was a light, no, a mirror – and that's what she'd used to direct the sunlight onto his toe. Because the afternoon sun was strong, all she was to him was a black figure haloed with light. Immediately his hand patted the bed next to him to see if the girl he brought home last night was safe. She wasn't there.

The figure spoke. "So I was right. You are a vampire." It said dully.

The mirror dropped on the floor. Katsu shaded his eyes with his hands – even his supernaturally enhanced eyesight had trouble staring into sunlight. With a grimace he made a conscious effort to retract his fangs. He recognized that voice. It was the girl, but what did she mean? He'd explained everything to her last night. Then it came back to him, the slight chemical tang to her blood. It tasted different than the blood of someone who'd been drinking alcohol. Someone had spiked her drink with a chemical compound. He didn't know it until he'd tasted her blood; he'd just thought her a bit tipsy. It explained though the smugly triumphant looks on the two girls' faces she'd come in with when he escorted her out of the club. At the time, he thought they'd been happy for her.

Katsu had no false modesty. He knew his face and form attracted women. He'd thought those two liked the fact that their slightly mousy looking little friend ended up with someone like him. For all her lack of inhibitions and giggly enthusiasm, she'd been strangely innocent up to the point where he realized it was her first time. By this point his fangs were already in her neck and it was too late to stop either the drinking or the physical seduction that went along with it. Her friends must have spiked her drink and sent her with him. They weren't her friends at all. If they used one of the common date rape drugs, it explained why she didn't remember him explaining what he wanted of her.

"Well, you're not going to make one out of me." The figure turned around and walked into the light.

What did she mean? He hadn't given her any of his blood, only taken hers. Katsu bunched the sheet around his waist and was at the doorway of his room in an instant. Three steps into the hall and he was stopped by the edge of the sunlight spilling down the hallway from his open front door. The throbbing pain of his burned toe was a vivid reminder of what would happen if he took another step into that rectangular column of light.

Squinting, he watched the girl cross the threshold and walk half way down the walk. The concrete walkway bisected a dying front lawn bordered on all sides by a high tile topped plaster wall. The solid wooden gate at the end of the walkway guaranteed privacy. She never made it that far. Instead, she turned around to face him, took the wooden stick and pointed it at an angle against her upper torso, just under her breasts.

"No!" he shouted, as she tensed her arms and plunged the sharpened edge into her flesh.

She gave a strangled cry and fell forward onto the pale concrete, her harsh landing pushing the stake even farther into her body. A red pool of blood began to fan out from underneath her. She grimaced in pain as she stared into his eyes, with the harsh sun beating down on her.

"Why?" she whispered in agony. "Why did you do that to me?" Then her face clenched and her forehead touched the cement, hiding her expression from him.

Katsu didn't think anything left in the world could shock him anymore, but shocked he was, into dangerous immobility.

Shaking himself out of it, he moved, throwing himself to the right, and into the living room area, bathed in a dull glow from the rattan shades he always kept drawn. His long black trench coat, which he'd carelessly tossed across the sofa back while divesting himself and the girl of their clothing last night, was where he'd left it. He dropped the sheet and threw the trench coat's heavy welcoming folds over his head, took a deep breath, and plunged outside.

His feet burned.

His arms, when he reached out to grab the girl's body, blistered immediately on contact with the sunlight.

He let out one strangled sob and dragged her quickly inside, kicking the door shut behind him. Laying her body on the granite worktable in the middle of his tiny, disused kitchen, he grabbed the ornamental dishtowels off their holders and tried to staunch the wound.

One of the kitchen chairs was on the floor in pieces, with a carving knife. As he wrenched the stake from her body, he saw why. The stake was a chair leg, its dowelled ridges matching perfectly with the other three legs still attached to the chair seat lying on the floor. She'd sharpened it to a point with the knife. The chips of shaved wood were scattered all over the kitchen floor.

Tossing it aside, he pressed the sodden dishtowels on the wound, the scent of blood about to drive him wild. He could hear her heartbeat fluttering erratically. He was losing her. She was already in shock, eyes slitted half closed. There was nothing else to do to save her but…

He bent down and licked some of the blood off her belly, moving the towels aside for access. For this to work, the blood had to be pure, untainted with alcohol or drugs. He hoped it was enough. Then he lifted his wrist to his mouth and tore open an inch long incision. Holding it over her mouth, and lifting the back of her neck with his other hand, he caused her mouth to fall open so the blood would drip inside.

Her heartbeat slowed, slowed, then stopped. But was it the result of his vampire blood, or was he too late? Had she died before he could change her? You couldn't turn someone already dead.

There it was, faint – oh so very faint – and slower than the slowest vampire heartbeat he'd ever heard, but it was beating again. The blood it pumped was no longer the bright red of a living person, but was rapidly becoming the black of vampiric blood. He'd saved her, but at what cost?

**A/N** I must be out of my mind to write an AU vampire fic featuring Tsubame. I cheerfully blame Jane Drew and Vathara for exemplifying how a vampire fic can be done well. This poor effort can't even come close to those two, but if you like dark, angsty sorts of stories, enjoy. Please review, if only to tell me that you agree with me that I'm nuts to even attempt this. Unfortunately, what happened to Tsubame happens in real life all too often. (the date rape, not being bitten by a vampire) Never put yourself in a position where you're vulnerable, or expect that someone else will look out for you.


	2. Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

Sano woke slowly, groggily. Even when he'd been alive, he'd hated getting up in the mornings. Now his 'mornings' were evenings.

The red flashing light of his answering machine on the bedside table caught his attention immediately. He didn't have the sort of human buddies who left messages on his answering machine, and he knew he hadn't had any messages when he'd fallen into that dead dreamless sleep at dawn that claimed vampires as soon as the sun rose.

It took a lot to wake a vampire during the day, and even then they had a tendency to go comatose within a few minutes of being woken. Who could have been woken from their sleep and been coherent enough to leave a message? Pressing the button, he played the message.

"Sano. When you get this message, get to my place immediately. I've got a problem. I need your help."

It was Katsu. Sano recognized the voice on his answering machine the minute he heard the first word. Even when when Katsu and Sano had been part of the Sekihoutai as children before they were turned, Katsu had never sounded this panicked.

Sano pulled on his clothes and sped through the streets to his friend's house, cursing Katsu's desire to live in the seedy suburbs of L.A. rather than in a nice clean shiny high-rise apartment building like him.

He shoved open the wooden door in Katsu's wall and strode quickly up the concrete path, stopping dead at the unmistakable smell of blood at his feet. There was a large patch of it, and even in the chill of the evening, flies still worried at its edges. It was clearly human blood, not vampiric. Gathering himself, Sano leapt over it gracefully and pushed open Katsu's door.

"Sano. You came."

Katsu was there, head lolling back against a cabinet, sitting on his kitchen counter. Sano drew in a breath with a hiss. A convention, that. Vampires really didn't need to breathe anymore.

Katsu's right cheek was marred with a line of blisters. So were the arms that lay at his side, and his feet and lower legs, which dangled against the cabinets below the countertop on which he sat. He'd been sun burned. His shoulders and chest looked OK, and his upper thighs and torso must have been as well, for he was wearing boxer style shorts, and Sano knew from experience that putting clothes on over sun blisters was too painful to contemplate.

Katsu's gaze shifted from Sano's shocked face to the granite kitchen workstation in front of him. On it lay a girl, a big red hole in the middle of her cream colored chemise, and blood stained towels on either side of her.

"How is she?" Katsu asked tiredly.

"Screw her. How are you?" Sano got straight to the point.

"I'll live." Katsu smiled wanly, then winced as the expression pulled at his burned cheek.

"What happened?" Sano felt his anger rising. Katsu was his friend, one of the few he could still hang around with from his human days, and if someone was responsible for burning him, they would pay.

Slowly, Sano got the whole story out of Katsu, how he'd picked up a girl in a club – nothing unusual in that, Katsu was a chick magnet and found his human blood supply that way. He'd asked her to be his partner for the night and she'd seemed happy to go along with it. Again, not unusual. There were a lot of kinky chicks in L.A. willing to try anything, whether they believed in vampires or not. Some even became addicted to the sensation, enjoying the physical act that often accompanied bloodletting. They'd no more betray a vampire's identity than an addict would the drug supplier he depended upon. Others panicked afterward and had to be hypnotized to forget that they'd donated blood, and not to the Red Cross. Either way, clubs were a good way to pick up a blood source for the evening. If a vampire didn't get human blood at least once a month or so, he or she would get restless, irritable, and twitchy. Twitchy vampires became desperate ones, and that caused trouble no one was willing to allow. The rest of the time animal blood would do fine.

This girl had been drugged. Since it was past time for Katsu to get his human blood fix, he hadn't looked at her too closely, just assumed from her behavior and her laughing assent to his questions, that she was willing to give him what he wanted. So he'd taken her home only to find she'd woken with no memory of what had gone on the night before, seen the bite marks and assumed that meant she would become a vampire. So she'd walked outside in the sun where she thought Katsu couldn't follow, and staked herself. Now she lay on the granite table; it was night, and she still hadn't woken.

"So let me get this straight." Sano said, leaning against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed, and nudging the base of the workstation with his foot. "The girl is so upset at the thought of turning vampire that she stakes herself. Then you go and turn her while she's unconscious. And now you're wondering why she won't wake up? Hell, if I were her I wouldn't want to wake up to my worst nightmare either."

Katsu winced and turned his face away. "I didn't know what else to do to save her."

"Why didn't you just let her die, if that's what she wanted?"

"I couldn't. This was all my fault."

Sano snorted. "Yeah, right. Like you put the date rape drug in her drink. Like you knew she wouldn't remember agreeing to let you drink from her. Like you…"

"She was a virgin."

Sano closed his mouth with a snap and abandoned what he was about to say. Cripes. What could he say to that? Vampires purposely chose blood suppliers who were jaded simply because they didn't panic like the innocent did. It wasn't a hard or fast rule, it was just common sense to pick people who lived fast lifestyles and were used to off the wall requests from the strangers they went home with.

"I should have known. If I hadn't been so hungry, if I'd gone a bit slower, taken my time with her more…I should have sensed it."

Katsu looked so dejected that Sano knew he had to do something to keep him from wallowing in his depression. It was time to get tough. "Go to bed."

"What?" Katsu lifted his chin and stared at his friend.

"Go to bed." Sano repeated. "This was an emergency turning. The girl probably won't wake for another day. You've still got that coffin in your basement I got you for a joke on your last birthday, right?"

Wordlessly, Katsu nodded.

"I'll put her in there and lock it so if she wakes she can't hurt herself until we have a chance to talk to her and explain what's happened." Sano kept his voice low and soothing as he put an arm around Katsu's shoulders and pushed him gently off the kitchen counter and onto his feet, and began moving him in the direction of his bedroom. "You're burned. It's gonna take you a couple of days to recover. Luckily you just fed."

Sano pointedly ignored the way Katsu shuddered at the memory of the fiasco that had been, and continued. "So you won't have to go out for a few days. Just in case, I'll get some of the blood bags from my freezer and put them in your refrigerator to defrost. You really should have your own supply on hand, you know."

"I never needed to before." Katsu objected, more from habit than any real desire to argue.

"Yeah, I know. You didn't want the chicks to open your refrigerator and freak out. But honestly, Katsu, how many suppliers have you brought home who wanted to cook for you, even before they knew what you were?"

It was an old familiar argument between the two of them, and it got them companionably to the bedroom and Katsu tucked up into bed before it ended.

As soon as the bedroom door closed, Sano went to work. Vampires healed much faster than regular humans, but sun burn worked differently. It damaged their tissue deeply, and took a lot longer to heal. Same thing with holy water burns. Katsu would be out of it for a while, sleeping both day and night until he was better.

The girl, on the other hand…

Sano stared down at her in cold dislike. She was one of those humans who looked younger than they were. She had to be in her mid to late twenties, though she looked barely out of her teens. The main reason why she looked young was her size. She was on the short side, with soft, delicate features. Bangs and a blunt cut page boy style haircut framed her cheeks with two chestnut colored wings of hair falling down by her cheekbones and ending just over her collarbone and shoulders. She looked a bit like a china doll.

Shrugging, Sano scooped her up, carried her downstairs and dumped her into the black coffin with the white silk lining. He locked it firmly and set a few cinder blocks on top for good measure. Newly turned vampires were weak, but there was no sense taking chances.

OOO

Six hours before dawn she woke. Reading the newspaper in Katsu's living room, Sano heard her soft cry of terror. He heard too, the scrape of her fingernails against the silk lid of the coffin. Soon the noise of shredding silk was replaced by splintering wood, but the cinder blocks kept the lid on tight.

Ignoring the girl's panicked breaths – she hadn't discovered yet that respiration was optional – he turned to the sports pages and read the stories leisurely. This girl caused Katsu to get burned to save her. Let her wait.

Eventually, about an hour later, Sano decided it was time to let her out and introduce her to her new life. He jumped down the basement steps in one leap, just because he could, and sauntered over to the coffin. The lid was thumping faintly, and he could hear her fists pounding monotonously against it, so he brushed the cinderblocks to the floor. The crash sounded loud in the enclosed basement, but Sano knew that Katsu was in a deep healing sleep and wouldn't hear it.

He flicked the lock off the coffin's edge with one fingernail, and allowed the girl to shove the lid open violently.

She instantly sat up, gasping, and leaned over the edge, hands dangling over the side. All of her fingers were bloodied with the black thick vampiric ooze that had replaced her human blood.

Schooling his face into a nonchalant mask, Sano refused to allow pity to color his treatment of the girl. She might be one of them now, and knowing Katsu he'd probably take her under his wing until she learned the ropes so she'd be around for a while, but he didn't have to like her.

"So, you're awake."

The girl stiffened and swung her head around to look at him.

Sano had found a toothpick in Katsu's kitchen and was chewing on it, hands thrust into his pants pockets and his usual smirk on his face. He wasn't going to baby her. Why should he?

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice hoarse with having choked back screams for the past hour.

"I'm a friend of Katsu's." Sano spit the toothpick out of his mouth and smiled, deliberately baring his fangs. "You remember him, right? The guy you…"

She must have kicked as she twisted and fell out of the coffin on the side away from Sano, because the whole thing fell off the two wooden sawhorses it had been resting on.

"Get away from me! Don't come near me! Don't let him come near me!"

She sounded frantic, looked it too the way she'd backed herself right up against Katsu's worktable. She stared around the basement, saw the stairway behind Sano, and turned wide, frightened eyes on him, the obstacle in her way.

"Calm down, missy. No one's going to hurt you. It's not like it's all that easy to hurt a vampire."

She sobbed when the last word left his mouth. It was a harsh, terrified sound, and it grated on Sano's nerves. It was time he sat her down and told her the cold hard facts about her new existence. He took a step forward.

She turned, scrambled up the worktable and thrust herself through the small window with the painted panes that lay in the wall at the ceiling of the basement. Sano had forgotten it was there, and stepped back as the shower of glass shards she left in her wake rained down on the worktable, the fallen coffin, and the floor. He liked the suit he was wearing, and didn't want it to tear.

He stepped up to the table, but realized he was too big to fit through it. Her new strength, though less than that of a seasoned vampire, had allowed her to propel herself through the window just by lunging up from the tabletop. That strength hadn't, however, protected her from the glass. Her blood stood out on the edges of the broken glass remaining in the frame.

Sighing, Sanosuke turned and bounded up the stairs to go after her, when he heard a moan coming from Katsu's room. Abandoning the chase, he rushed to his friend's bedside.

Katsu's head was twitching from side to side. Vampires usually didn't dream, but in the throes of sun sickness all sorts of unusual and unpleasant things happened to their bodies. Pulling his cellphone out of his pocket, Sano dialed a vampire who'd been a doctor once upon a time. Forget the girl. When Katsu felt better enough to ask, he'd just say she was still pissed off at Katsu for turning her without her permission, and she'd gone to find another vampire to show her the ropes. After all, hadn't the girl said, "Don't let him come near me?" You couldn't get any clearer than that.

She'd probably fall asleep out in the open somewhere and burn to ashes in the sun, not having the sense to get under cover. Or if she started acting wildly, another vampire would kill her to prevent their kind from being discovered. Either way, if she disappeared then Katsu would eventually forget her. His loyalty was to his friend, not to the girl who'd gotten him burned. If he'd been a human still, he might have thought differently, but becoming a vampire had hardened him. You had to be hard to survive.


	3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER THREE

Sewer drains were the best places. Work crews didn't like to go there at night. Rats inhabited them in abundance, and within days she was as adept at catching them as she was at processing expense accounts at her old job. She wondered if they missed her. She wondered if Meg and Sara ever felt guilty when she didn't come back after they'd let her leave the club with a complete stranger.

She supposed she shouldn't blame them. How were they to know that she wasn't the type to go off with strange men? It's not like she'd gone out of her way to be friendly and talk to everyone. She'd just stayed in her nice safe cubicle most of the time, did her work, and went home. Meg and Sara were reaching out to her, trying to get to know her even though she'd turned down Meg's proposal to streamline the expense sheets. Poor Meg. She hadn't realized that the method of streamlining she'd proposed would have made it easier for unscrupulous people to pad their accounts.

So here she was, far from nice safe cubicle, to nice safe darkness. It's not like she could go out in public dressed in a blood stained slip.

It's not like she could go out during the day at all.

It took a lot of getting used to, the heightened senses, having to drink blood.

What a relief that animal blood worked.

Tsubame decided that first night that she would never ever kill or harm another human being. No one should have to go through what she did. She just couldn't understand why the stake hadn't worked. It had hurt, so much so that she didn't want to think of trying again. Maybe you had to be really dead, really a vampire before stakes worked. She must have really died from the stake, for she'd woken in a coffin. Perhaps the vampire's bite had an incubation period, like diseases did sometimes. It really didn't matter how, she was a vampire and there was nothing she could do to change that.

There was an earthquake one evening about two months after she'd turned vampire. She was sitting in a circular tunnel under the city when the ground started shaking, a gentle rocking motion that came up through the earth below.

There was a squeaking, and a rush of small furry bodies hurtling by. All the rats left the sewers. She'd watched, bemused, until she caught the sound of rushing water from broken water mains. She'd been flooded out. She'd ended up in the suburbs, wandering through alleys, and peering into backyards while waiting for the water levels to drop so she could return to the sewers.

"Speedy? Speedy?" It was a child's voice, a human boy, calling out in the darkness.

Tsubame had only seen humans from a distance for the past two months. She avoided them. She had to. She felt the siren call of the blood in their veins and forced herself to leave before it became too much to bear.

She hungered now, not having found any rats since the earthquake. Rats didn't have a whole lot of blood, so you had to hunt them constantly.

Quietly, she moved up to the back fence of the house with the boy's voice. Just hearing another human voice made her feel strange. She hadn't spoken to anyone since that vampire had let her out of the coffin.

Closing her eyes, she could sense the small human child walking desultorily around the backyard calling for his pet. Without looking, she knew where he was, because of the blood within him, warm and alive. She shivered with anticipation, and then shuddered in self-loathing. He was human, like she'd been. How could she even think of taking the blood he needed to survive?

The child went back inside, the rasp of the sliding glass door as audible to Tsubame as if she'd been standing right next to it. She bit her lip and felt her fangs extend.

No.

She had to leave, and now.

She got to her knees, just as a yellow mass came racing up the alley, snarling.

It was a dog, a big one. Some kind of Labrador mix, and it saw her as a threat, and began to bark.

It didn't know what hit it. She kicked its legs out from under it as it lunged at her throat and sank her teeth into its neck as it fell on its side. It yelped a bit, startled, then began to relax as she drank.

Dogs were a lot bigger than rats. She was surprised to find she felt full, and she hadn't even drained it. In fact, she didn't need to drink any more. The dog could live.

She pulled back, not bothering to wipe the blood from her chin and stared at the animal in her lap. She'd liked animals. She'd been afraid of big dogs like this one as a child, but she'd always loved puppies and kittens.

The dog whined a bit. Losing the blood made it weak, though it had the opposite affect on her. She could feel the exhilaration of the food coursing through her veins, becoming energy.

The twin holes on the dog's neck were seeping blood. She put her hand over the wounds and pressed down to make them stop bleeding. The dog yipped a bit, but settled down, and she used her other hand to pat its head, experimentally. Amazingly, its tail flopped once, twice, three times against the ground. She'd made it wag its tail!

"Speedy?"

A little boy in flannel train pajamas stood at an opening in the fence, a gate that she hadn't noticed, and stared wide-eyed at her and the animal in her lap. Feeding had made her careless. She hadn't heard him come to the gate.

As she looked toward him, the light from the house behind him spilled through the gateway and onto her face. She saw him look at her chin; notice the blood and the fangs. His eyes got big. He opened his mouth and…

She moved to him so fast he didn't have time to scream as she clapped her hand over his mouth instinctively.

He began to squirm and try to cry out. She dragged him out of the gateway and over to where she'd been sitting against the fence.

The dog growled low in his throat, and the child reached a hand out toward him. The dog quieted.

This must be 'Speedy'.

Tsubame had been making shushing noises which the child ignored. Now she changed her tactics.

"Is this your dog?" she whispered in the boy's ear. He was about six or seven maybe, and he smelled of soap and the blood coursing in the veins under his skin. Why was his blood still calling to her? She'd just fed.

Swallowing, she waited for him to nod, then went on. "He's not dead. He's going to be fine. I just took a little of his blood."

The child screamed against her hand, and she winced. That was not the right thing to say to calm him down. She went back to making shushing noises, and when he stopped shrieking, she continued. "I'm not going to hurt you."

The boy made a rude noise of disbelief. Tsubame nearly laughed. It was so normal, so child-like.

Taking a chance, she took her hand off his mouth, and turned him gently around at the shoulders so she could look in his eyes. They were brown, like hers, but full of fear. His skin was rather pale with blue veins at the temples. Beautiful veins, filled with…Tsubame shook her head to brush that thought away.

"Why did you hurt Speedy?" he asked, voice full of fear and sadness.

"I'm sorry." Tsubame wished that she still had the human luxury of tears. "I didn't mean to. I had to eat."

"Eat someone else's dog." The boy's tears were spilling down his face now, and she released her grip on his right shoulder to let him wipe them away.

"I promise, I'll never bother Speedy again."

That seemed to satisfy the child until another thought occurred to him, and his eyes got big. "Are you going to come back and eat me?"

Tsubame didn't want the leap of hunger that happened in her chest to show on her face at his question. She had to forcibly restrain herself from falling on his neck, and only just managed to still the tremor of want in the hand that still held his left shoulder.

"No." she told him in a low voice. "I swear to you. I have never hurt a human being. I will never hurt you or any other humans ever." She'd vowed it to herself when she first became a vampire, but now it was official. Now there was a witness.

"Cross your heart and hope to die if you lie?" the child asked desperately.

Of course he was desperate. He wanted reassurance, because that's what children needed. Tsubame might not be human anymore, but she could remember from her babysitting jobs that children wanted you to tell them everything was going to be all right.

She dropped the hand that rested on the child's shoulder and let it fall into her lap with the other, clasping them together. "I swear to you, I will never drink human blood. I'd rather die." She swore solemnly. "Will that do?"

The boy nodded reluctantly.

From beyond the fence, Tsubame heard the sliding glass door open. Someone was coming in search of the child.

Leaning forward, she looked straight into the boy's eyes. "I'll go now. Please don't tell anyone I was here. They might think you're crazy."

"But what about Speedy?" The boy pointed to the dog lying quietly in the alleyway.

"Tell them some kind of animal bit him."

Heavy footsteps were crossing the grass of the lawn and coming toward the gate. Tsubame got to her feet. The adult's blood, like the boy's was calling to her, making her almost dizzy with longing. "I've got to go. Remember, don't tell."

And with that, she took off running, knowing that she'd be just a blur to the boy who waited by his dog for his parent to come and take him into the safe lighted house, away from things that creep in the night. Away from her.

OOO

The next month, she set off for the Sierra Nevadas, to the national forest with its miles and miles of wilderness filled with lots of animals to feed upon, and only a few hikers to avoid. Her family used to take camping trips there. Besides, the call of human blood was becoming too much for her to resist, so she left the populated areas, traveled along the roads by night, feeding off pets from random backyards, leaving them weak but alive. Every town had sewer systems, and she slept there during the days, resuming her journey until at last she made it to the mountains where caves, not sewers, became her resting places.

And there she stayed, venturing into hikers' campsites only to steal clothing when her slip at last fell apart. She stole a knife so she wouldn't always leave dual tooth marks on the smaller animals she drained completely dry – the forest rangers were beginning to talk. She also stole boots since bare footprints would also cause comment.

She learned the area thoroughly, mapping out in her mind every overhang, every cavern and dark place that offered respite from the sun. She learned how to find and catch animals by using her heightened senses. Because she was a dead thing and unnatural, they didn't know what to make of her and would flee or attempt to attack her. She had no Pocahontas style affinity for the beasts she hunted, yet she learned to live in their world, to sense danger, and weather changes, and to use her senses for survival as all good beasts should. And she stayed away from humans. That was her way of surviving.

Until one day, he came.


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer: All characters belong to the great Watsuki except for any OC – the Ocs are mine.

To my reviewers – IknowNot, Nekotsuki, Lolopopoki, and avidrkfan – thanks for reading and commenting.

CHAPTER FOUR

Sano entered Sagara's office, hidden away in the basement of an abandoned warehouse.

"We've received a message from the Meiji faction up North."

Sano immediately bristled at the words from his captain. "Those bastards! What do they want? Another fight?"

Captain Sagara, a tall, lean vampire whose brown hair had a tendency to fall over his eyes, jerked his neck in a clean, compact motion to move the locks away from his face. "No. You know we're in no shape for another go around with them."

"We held our own." Sano returned confidently.

Sagara held his gaze for a long minute, then said. "We lost half our forces and so did they. I'd say it was a draw."

Reluctantly, Sano nodded.

Sagara continued. "We're still independent of them, and that's what matters. Evidently, they want a favor."

"A favor?" Sano repeated slowly, brows furrowed in disbelief. "What makes them think we'd ever do them a favor after they tried to take over our territory?"

Sagara shrugged and looked at the painting on his wall of a Japanese garden with a sun-speckled pond with an arched bridge over it, shaped like a rainbow. It was a scene from their past, a world they could never re-enter. "Remember, Sano. When we were alive, the Sekihoutai served the Meiji cause at one time."

Sano. "Yeah, until they betrayed you. If they'd taken your head instead of Ito's by accident, then your master couldn't have turned you while you lay dying. Those scum don't deserve any loyalty."

Sagara turned back with a mirthless grin. "We can't choose our death, Sano. It comes for us when it comes. The Meiji officials who ordered my death lived out their lifespans and are gone. I remain. Katsura's vampires up North weren't the ones in the government who betrayed the Sekihoutai."

"Why didn't you go after them when you were turned?"

Sagara's eyes darkened with memory. "Because destroying the Meiji meant bringing the Tokugawa back to power, and how could I take away what little hope the peasants had for change? The Meiji, for all their corruption, at least passed laws guaranteeing freedom."

"I still don't understand why you're even considering doing Katsura a favor."

"Because it's something that might affect us all. There's a rogue loose up North. Drained corpses have been found in the mountains. If the humans start to suspect it's us…"

"Damn it!" Sano punched his hand into his palm, then let both hands fall abruptly. "Let them take care of it themselves."

Sagara crossed his arms. "They say they're busy. They asked that we send our strongest vampire to deal with the matter."

"I'll go."

"No." Sagara lifted a hand to stop him as Sano prepared to brush past him. "I've decided to send Yahiko."

"Yahiko?" Sano glared at his captain. "Yahiko's just a kid! He hasn't even been a vampire for four decades!"

"Exactly."

Sano stopped ranting and stared at Sagara. "You're sending him because he's not the strongest, is that it?"

Sagara nodded, and watched Sanosuke assimilate the information. A frown appeared on Sano's face.

"He's not the strongest, but he's a lot stronger than you think, Sanosuke. He'll be alright."

Sano shrugged, and looked down. "Hey, I'm not worried about him. Little brat."

Disbelief and humor flashed across Sagara's eyes, but he said nothing.

Sano noticed Sagara's lack of response, and plunged on. "Fine. So we send the brat and then what?"

"Then we wait and see why the Meiji group wanted our strongest warriors up North."

"Warriors?"

Sagara nodded. "They requested five. I told their messenger that most of our strongest were out on missions, that I was considering expanding into San Diego and sent them down there to pave the way. It was a lie, and I let him guess I was lying."

"So we'd look weaker than we really are?"

Sagara nodded. "They'll assume I don't have five strong warriors left."

"I don't like this." Sano said flatly.

"Nor do I. Spread the word to the men to be on alert."

Sano nodded, and left.

OOO

Yahiko was not happy. Why did he have to go kill the vampire who was carelessly leaving drained bodies out in the boondocks for the authorities to find? He knew Captain Sagara's group of vampires was short handed since their war with the Meiji group, but even so, there had to be someone else he could have sent. Why not that big lazy lug Sanosuke?

Sano had been a vampire long before Yahiko. Yahiko's mom had been in the camps in Manzanar during World War II. She'd married one of the guards there and five years later along came Yahiko. From his dad he learned to play baseball and love barbecues. From his mom he'd learned Japanese and was sent to her uncle to learn martial arts. His dad approved, said it kept him out of trouble. By that he meant away from the hippies and the drug scene.

It was drugs that got his dad.

After the war, his dad joined the police force in San Francisco. That's where Yahiko grew up, and where some drug dealers his father had sent to jail got out, and killed his mom and dad. Yahiko had come home from a late night college kenjutsu class just as they were leaving. It was too late for his parents, but Yahiko wanted revenge, so he'd pulled out his practice sword. He'd killed one of them, but the other had a gun.

They'd ended up on the street where a red haired bystander had pulled out a sword and finished off the gun-wielding murderer. Then he'd knelt by Yahiko, whose life's blood was draining away, and asked if he'd like to become a vampire. From what one of the criminals had said, they'd been sent by someone to kill his dad. If he died, Yahiko would never get revenge on the man ultimately responsible for his parents' death, so he'd said yes.

The stranger turned out to be Battousai, the legendary assassin of the vampire world. He told Yahiko to call him Kenshin, and said he was waiting in San Francisco for his wife to join him. He helped Yahiko to track down and kill the drug lord responsible for his father's death, then traveled with him to Los Angeles and asked Sano to look after him. Even now, over thirty years later, Sano still treated him like a brat and a burden.

Yahiko hated camping. He'd never been a boy scout and never wanted to. Sure, trees were pretty and all that, but who needed the dirt? It was a good thing he could sense other vampires, or he'd never find the one he was looking for in all this wilderness.

It took a month of sleeping in a specially designed tent during the day and hunting at night. Yahiko only brought one pack of human blood, so if he didn't find the vampire soon, he'd have to get more, since the animal blood was only a stopgap measure. It was harder to hunt down a wild creature than to just walk up to a domesticated one and drink your fill. It wasted time, and Yahiko was getting impatient.

It seemed like the vampire was always one step ahead of him, but at last he felt its presence nearby instead of far off when he woke one evening. Taking down the tent and shoving it into his backpack only took a moment, then he set off up a ridge, running in the direction of the vampire.

When he got to the spot where he sensed its presence, he stopped. He was at the edge of a bowl shaped depression. Resting on a large, cracked boulder, he stared down into a pastoral scene. A pond lay in the center of the bowl. Grass, dotted with little yellow flowers, surrounded the pond. A young deer made its way delicately toward the water. The animal hadn't smelled him yet, and moved with fluid unconcern. It lowered its head to drink.

There was a blur of motion. It would have been impossible for a human to see exactly what happened, but Yahiko did.

A vampire burst out from underwater, grabbed the deer by the neck, and twisted it so that it fell to the grass on its side. Within the same second, the vampire dug its fangs into the deer's neck and began to drink.

The deer's legs thrashed twice, and then it fell into a relaxed lassitude as the vampire took its fill of blood.

Yahiko's lips pursed, but he didn't release the low whistle of appreciation that he wanted to. Why alert the vampire to his presence and lose the element of surprise? He had to admit though, that trick of hiding underwater to draw prey in was pretty cool. Since vampires didn't have to breathe, they could stay underwater indefinitely, though the wrinkled skin got to you after a while.

Finished, the vampire raised its head, and pressed two fingers against the deer's neck for a moment, before releasing it. The deer rose to its feet, shook itself all over, staggered a bit, then jogged away.

The vampire flung its head back to get its damp hair off its face. It was sitting half in, half out of the water, one leg bent under it, and the other extended into the pond at its back. With the back of its hand, it wiped the blood off its chin and raised its face to the moonlight to watch the deer go.

That's when Yahiko realized that the vampire was a girl, and that she was beautiful.

She had on khaki colored shorts, hiking boots, and a maroon tank top. Her hair was short for a girl, barely touching her collarbone. It was dark looking because it was sopping wet, so he couldn't tell what actual color it was, and her eyes…

The girl turned and looked right at him. Her eyes were big and brown. He couldn't see the expression in them, because he was too far away.

In a second, he was even farther away as she jumped gracefully to her feet and took off uphill in the direction the deer had gone.

Too late, Yahiko registered a crack in the opposite edge of the bowl shaped depression. It was a way out, and she took it, scrambling up the edge of the ravine with a speed that took even his breath away.

Collecting himself, Yahiko ran after her, leaping from boulder to boulder along the edge of the bowl until he too reached the ravine. By this time she'd left it, and jumped to the mountainside next to it, and was scaling what looked to be a steep cliff.

Yahiko smirked. She might think getting to the top of the mountain would give her an advantage, but she was wrong. So what if she could see him coming? He'd just keep coming until he caught her. One vampire, however cute, couldn't be allowed to endanger all of vampire-kind.

'Cute'? Where had that come from? Shrugging it off, Yahiko followed the vampire up the side of the mountain, dropping his backpack and letting it fall to the bottom of the ravine so it wouldn't hinder him. He kept his sword though. He felt the weight of it, strapped securely to his back. He was going to need it. Decapitation was one of the surest methods of killing vampires.

The girl got to a ledge and disappeared. Yahiko kept his gaze upward as he found the hand and footholds he needed to follow her, but she never appeared again above the ledge. Was she waiting in ambush?

He angled the direction of ascent, and came level with the ledge while clinging to the rock face on the right, instead of coming directly up underneath it.

She wasn't there, waiting to push a boulder onto his head as he half expected. She wasn't there at all, but a dark, wide crack in the mountainside was. It was the entrance to a cave.

Damn. She was probably halfway through the mountain by now. Who knew how many exits there were to the system of caverns honeycombing these mountains? Gritting his teeth, Yahiko plunged in after her.

It only took a second for his eyes to adjust to the greater darkness inside the cave. It was a tunnel-like cavern, high and wide where he entered, but reducing to a smaller exit in the back. Yahiko ran, ducking his head a little under the lowering rock ceiling, and burst out into an open area with three more cavern openings to choose from. He paused, staring at the ground before each, but the sand was so uneven that he couldn't see footprints, or tell which opening she'd chosen.

He took another step forward and reached for her with his senses.

That's what saved him. He had a bare second to register that her presence was above him, when she dropped.

Yahiko leapt forward and turned, reaching over his shoulder to draw his sword out of the sheath strapped to his back. It was a razor sharp wakizashi, his favorite Japanese weapon. Shorter than the traditional katana, it was easier to conceal, and the length suited him.

She'd landed in a crouch right where he'd just been standing; a wicked looking hunting knife plunged into the sand about a foot in front of her.

Yanking the knife out of the ground, she rose partway to her feet, remaining in a crouched stance as she spoke.

"Tired of hunting human prey, vampire?"

She held the knife's hilt in her fist, so the sharp blade pointed forward, protruding from the bottom on her fist. Her other hand was up by her face, ready to block or punch.

Yahiko kept his feet apart, one slightly forward of the other, balancing his weight between them. His drawn sword was pointed out straight in front of him, the tip directed at the girl.

"You should know all about hunting humans," he sneered.

Yahiko thrust forward suddenly, pushing off the balls of his feet into a lunge that should have punctured her chest, but she pivoted fluidly and brought her knife crashing down on the center of his blade, knocking it toward the ground.

His hands loosened on the hilt at the force of the impact. Tightening his fingers, he immediately swung the blade to the right, angled upward to take her head.

She danced away and stood in the doorway of one of the other caverns, crouched and waiting.

Yahiko turned his body to face her. "You leave their bodies where they can be found. Did you really think we'd let that go?"

The girl's expression didn't change from the hard wariness she'd had since the beginning of the fight, but she answered in a derisive tone. "I don't kill humans,' she said. "Unlike you."

Then she was gone, and the cavern doorway stood empty. Yahiko had no choice; he had to catch her. He hesitated a moment, then ran after her, sword out in front, at the ready. Even so, she almost got him.

A slight whoosh of air at his left was the only warning he got as the knife slashed down while he ran past. He threw himself to the side, earning a gash on his neck along the flesh under his ear. Swinging his wakizashi around in a horizontal slash, he forced her to jump back against the wall of rock behind her, but when he stepped forward and brought it back around for another slash, hoping to cut her while she was trapped against the rock, she surprised him.

Gathering her feet against the base of the rock wall, she pushed off and leaped over the swinging blade, and Yahiko, somersaulting to land behind him.

Yahiko ducked and turned on his knees, ending up with his sword held level in front of him, one knee up, and the other knee down, his shin lying parallel on the sand. They'd ended up in a dead end cavern. It was roughly oval, and they confronted each other, eyes glittering, at the narrow end of the egg shape by the entrance. A low-pitched rumbling noise came out of the girl's throat, like the warning growl of a dog.

He hated to admit it, but the girl's words were getting to him. Yahiko sank his weight into the heel of his right foot, which rested flat against the ground, and pulled his body upward into a fighting stance as he bit out the words in sharp, distinct syllables. "I…do…not…kill…humans."

A disbelieving snort was her only reply as she moved, throwing herself through the opening and back to the wide cavern where their fight had begun.

Having learned his lesson, Yahiko plunged in right behind her, to avoid giving her time to set up another ambush.

Sensing him at her heels, she turned and slashed. Yahiko blocked, and tilted his blade downward, trying to force her off balance by making her blade slide along his toward the ground.

She simply jumped back and landed in her favorite fighting stance, a crouch with both hands up and at the ready.

"I suppose you don't drink their blood either." She spat at him bitterly.

As he got back into his own favored stance with his feet apart and sword pointed outward, Yahiko's brow furrowed. There was something weird going on here. Why was she denying her misdeeds? They were both vampires, it wasn't like she'd been hauled in by the cops and had to lie or whine for a lawyer. And what was with that bizarre statement?

"Of course I do, we all do."

"I don't."

Yahiko's eyes widened. There was no way that could be true. Vampires needed human blood once a month to survive, so unless she'd only been turned a month ago…but no. Sagara had told him that bodies had been found every so often over the past two years. She had to be lying, unless she really wasn't the vampire killing the humans.

He stared at her. She stared back as if waiting for him to make his next move, and calculating how she'd block it. She wasn't scared or intimidated. She wasn't boasting about how clever she was. She was just determined to defend herself.

Yahiko lowered his sword and straightened his legs so he was standing in a more natural position. "So you're telling me that you're not the vampire leaving the drained bodies out in the woods?"

The girl stayed crouched down and wary. "No. I hunt animals, not humans. The bodies you speak of are already dead when he leaves them. They are no temptation to me."

Blinking, Yahiko assimilated the new information. "You said 'he'. 'He' who?"

She gave a quick shrug and continued to watch him tensely. "The human in the jeep. He is the temptation, not them."

Yahiko let his sword arm dangle at his side, and rubbed his chin with his other hand, thinking. "So let me get this straight. You've been watching some human dumping bodies in the woods for the past two years, and you haven't done anything about it? You keep bragging that you don't kill humans, but what about those bodies? If you really care at all about the humans, why didn't you stop him?"

The girl shifted slightly, moving to keep Yahiko in front of her, as he'd taken a step to the right while he was talking. Her knife remained in front of her body, protectively. "The humans are cold when he dumps them. I do not even know if he is the one who kills them. He could be an accomplice for a vampire. He could be dumping them for you."

Yahiko stared, dumbfounded at the implied accusation. She stared back steadily, not giving an inch. At last Yahiko shrugged and sheathed his sword behind his back. Crossing his arms, he regarded her consideringly.

"I believe you," he said at last. "If a human is dumping dead bodies, then it's a human matter. Come to the police station and give them a description, and we'll let them handle it."

She blinked. "Are you insane? Go down the mountain to a police station, with all that blood around?" she asked incredulously. Then she licked her lips unconsciously, moistening them. They were red, bow shaped lips, and they looked really soft.

Yahiko gulped, and pretended he hadn't noticed. "Why not?" he asked airily. "It's not like you HAVE to drain every human you see." He stuck his hand out toward her. "Come on."

Flinching, she drew back and growled. "I won't go."

When Yahiko stepped forward she lifted the knife menacingly with a low growl in the back of her throat, so he stopped. Scratching his head, he wondered why she was still acting like he wanted to kill her. "Look, if you don't want to go, fine. At least show me where he goes to dump the bodies and give me a description and I'll go tell the cops."

A drop of water from the girl's hair broke free and landed on her collarbone. She was silent the whole time it took for the drop to spill down her chest and disappear under the edge of her raspberry colored tank top. Then she spoke in a low, reluctant voice.

"He drives to different trailheads in a red jeep. The bodies are in a duffel bag he slings over his shoulder and he walks off the trails and dumps them out. Sometimes the animals get to them before hikers find them. He comes at night. That's all I know."

Yahiko nodded. "Show me where he dumped the last body."

At first, he thought she was going to refuse, but slowly she rose to a standing position, and lowered her knife. She was almost exactly his size, maybe a quarter of an inch or so shorter. She was also tiny, with thin wrists and ankles and a waist that he bet he could almost circle with both his hands. Her bosom wasn't very large, but it fit her proportionally. Yahiko wrenched his gaze off of it. He didn't want to spook her, she was wary enough as it was.

"This way," she said, and turned toward the entrance to the tunnel that led back to the ledge. Stepping through it first, she walked confidently through the tunnel to the opening, and moved out of Yahiko's way so he could exit to the ledge. This was a good sign. She'd turned her back to him; that showed that she trusted him not to attack her.

He bent his head a little to avoid knocking it on the rock above, and stepped out into the cool night air. He was just turning to thank her when an explosion of pain ripped through his chest.

She was behind him, her knife imbedded in his back, her other arm reaching under his to pull his chest toward her so his back was flush against her, enabling her to shove the knife in further.

In the midst of all that pain, he felt her eyelashes against his cheek as his head lolled back in shock, touching hers in a parody of a lover's embrace.

"Why?" Yahiko choked out.

"Because you are a monster, like me." She whispered, then shoved him forward off the cliff, and he was falling and falling for what seemed like forever, until he landed with a crash of pain and shattered bones on the rocks below.


	5. Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE

Yahiko stomped into the Sekihoutai leaders' meeting. Since their war with the Meiji, Sagara rotated the meeting place of the monthly meetings. They met in the basement of a nightclub this time, Sanosuke's choice. Yahiko always thought the rooster-head must've owned stock in the place because he was there so much. Stupid vampire.

The noise penetrated even to the basement, and its dull, pounding accompaniment would've given Yahiko a headache if he could still have them. As it was, he already had aches all over his body from where bones were still knitting themselves back together after his fall.

Six faces greeted him when he opened the thick metal door and stepped inside the room. The Sekihoutai leaders were seated on folding chairs around a rectangular table.

"Yahiko. Report?" Captain Sagara didn't waste any unnecessary words as Yahiko shut the door behind him and leaned against it wearily.

"I found the vampire living in the Sierra Nevadas, but it wasn't her. Some human has been going around killing those women."

Sagara was silent a moment, thinking, then he lifted his eyes to Yahiko's and asked, "Name?"

Yahiko shrugged, winced as the movement pulled at his still-healing scars, and said, "I didn't catch her name, I was too busy fighting her."

A ripple of amusement fluttered around the faces of Sagara's men.

"You look like hell, Yahiko." Keisuke, a big vampire with sideburns, guffawed. "What did she do to you?"

It pissed Yahiko off. "She didn't do all this. I fell off a cliff."

"You fell?" asked Yuji, polite disbelief in his tone. Tetsu, Yuji's best friend, raised an eyebrow sardonically.

Scowling, Yahiko admitted, "She knifed me first then shoved me off it."

"I've just got to meet this girl!" Keisuke muttered in admiration.

"Yeah, well you're out of luck because I didn't catch her name, and the next time you want to get rid of her, you'd be better off sending Battousai than Keisuke." Yahiko told his captain angrily.

The others laughed until Sagara quieted them by raising a finger and tapping on the table meditatively. "Tell me more about her."

Yahiko took a few steps away from the door and stood at the end of the table by where Sagara was sitting, addressing him and pointedly ignoring the others.

"She's…weird."

Sagara's eyes narrowed, intrigued. "How so?"

"She kept growling at me."

The brown haired vampire sat up straighter in his chair, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. "Growling?"

"Yeah." Yahiko blinked a bit at Sagara's interest. "She kept accusing me of killing the humans too."

"How old was she?"

Yahiko knew Sagara meant vampire years, not human ones, and thought back. "She seemed young – ten or maybe fifteen years a vampire."

Keisuke moved in his chair, about to make a snide remark about Yahiko's age, but subsided when Yuji tugged on his sleeve and shook his head. Yahiko saw their interaction, but glanced back at Sagara when the captain spoke.

"What did she look like?"

Yahiko shrugged again before remembering that it hurt. "I dunno. Like a girl. She was short," he glared at Keisuke, daring him to compare the girl's size to his own short stature. Keisuke simply lifted his hands in surrender, so Yahiko continued.

"She had short hair and bangs. She was kind of scrawny looking too." He finished airily, so they wouldn't think he'd thought she was pretty.

Sagara leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms. "If she was one of the Meiji vampires they'd have already dealt with her." He said reflectively, then his gaze sharpened and he continued. "Send upstairs for Sanosuke. He knows all the newer vampires in Southern California."

"Yeah, 'cause he keeps trying to win money off of them." Yahiko muttered as Winston, the latest recruit onto the Sekihoutai leadership team, got up from his chair to go fetch Sanosuke.

Winston reminded Yahiko of the Beach Boys, all blonde haired and blue eyed, except that his eyes were the cold, emotionless orbs of a long time vampire. Winston had been turned back in the late 1800s, and had been an actual cowboy, but he refused to talk about those days. Yahiko was determined to wear him down eventually. He found Winston's taciturn, deceptively relaxed manner to be the ultimate in coolness.

Within minutes, Winston returned with Sanosuke following. Captain Sagara greeted him, and quickly filled him in on what Yahiko told them about the girl vampire.

"Sounds a bit like the last one Katsu turned before he died." Sanosuke said. Katsu was one of the first casualties of the Sekihoutai's war with the Meiji when they'd tried to take over Sekihoutai territory. "I thought she'd be dead by now."

"Why?" asked Sagara.

"She ran off before Katsu or I could fill her in."

Sagara frowned. "Katsu didn't tell her anything before he changed her?"

"Uh, long story."

Sagara waited.

Yahiko could tell Sano didn't want to tell the story, but Sagara's silence demanded it. Reluctantly, Sano admitted that the girl had been drugged when Katsu took her home and that she didn't remember anything he'd told her, so she freaked out the next morning and ran. By the way Sano kept glancing over at Yahiko, stopping in the middle of the tale, then starting again, he figured Sano was editing the story a lot. It burned him up. He wasn't a kid anymore. He knew how vampires like Sano and Katsu liked to seduce their blood suppliers. Though how any woman could fall for that stupid rooster head's lines was beyond him. Scowling, he waited for Sano to finish.

"So what you're saying is," Sagara began slowly, "the girl ran off with no real knowledge of what it means to be a vampire. So all she knows are things from movies and books?"

"Yep."

Yahiko stopped scowling and thought back to his conversation with the girl. "That means she thinks we kill the humans we drink from?" he asked incredulously. Well, that explained why she'd called them both monsters.

Sagara nodded. "Damn that Bram Stoker." He muttered, as all the vampires around the room nodded their agreement.

Turning suddenly to Yahiko, Sagara asked him a question. "You said she growled and accused you of killing humans. Did she say if she'd ever killed one?"

Yahiko shook his head. "No. She said she'd never drunk human blood. I didn't believe her, but…"

"So she's feral."

"Huh?"

Yahiko staggered forward as Sanosuke smacked him on the back of the head. "Feral, Yahiko. Don't you know anything? A vampire who drinks only animal blood becomes like an animal eventually. They lose all their human qualities and have to be put down like rabid dogs or they'll give us away."

Yahiko recovered from his stumble, whipped around and glared at Sanosuke. "She's got more humanity than you, you rooster head. How could you just let her go off like that without telling her anything?"

"Break it up, you two." Sagara's quiet admonition stopped Sanosuke from a comeback, so he contented himself with scowling at Yahiko.

"Yahiko."

Yahiko wrenched his own scowling face away from Sano and looked back at his captain. "Yeah?"

"I want you to go back and get the girl. She's the only one who's seen the real killer. Already there are vampire rumors on the Internet about these bodies. If the legitimate press gets hold of evidence that the girl exists, even if she isn't the killer, we're all in danger."

"You want me to kill her?" Yahiko kept most of the dismay he felt at the thought out of his voice, but he was all too aware of Sagara's probing glance as the older vampire answered.

"No. Not yet. We need her to help catch the killer."

"But the killer's a human!" objected Yahiko.

Sagara's eyes clouded. All of a sudden, he looked tired. "I know, and usually we leave human crimes to the human police, but there may be more going on here than meets the eye. We've got to stop these killings before the rumors get out of hand. We have enough to worry about without the threat of exposure."

Something about the way Sagara said it sent a wave of concern through Yahiko. It wasn't often that Sagara looked harried.

"Come on," Sanosuke tugged on the back of Yahiko's shirt. "I could use your help out there on guard duty." The team leader who chose the meeting place of the month was also responsible for safeguarding it.

Yahiko glared, but stomped up to the metal door, opened it, and walked through.

Sano paused a moment to stare at Sagara, a challenge and a question in his eyes.

"Give Yahiko a month, then go after him. If the girl has really gone feral, kill her."

Sano allowed a brief smile to grace his lips. Katsu was recovering from the burns the girl caused when the Meiji attacked the Sekihoutai. If he'd been up to full strength, he might have made it.

"Fine, but just remember, the next meeting it's Keisuke's turn to do guard duty." Sano smirked at the big vampire sitting at the back of the table.

"Looking forward to it." Keisuke taunted back at him. "I'm planning our next meeting in a decent place that doesn't have folding chairs."

"Wuss," Sanosuke called out amiably on his way out the door.

OOO

Two metal blades, one short, one long, crashed together hard enough to cause sparks.

They fought in a clearing half way up the side of a mountain, with boulders all around, studding the treeless alpine meadow. It took Yahiko almost a month again to find the girl, and when he had, she'd jumped him.

Breaking contact, they leapt apart. The moon was bright overhead, and bathed the white rounded boulders with an eerie glow. They looked like the top of skulls protruding up from the ground.

The girl took two steps backwards, crouched, and jumped up and to the rear, landing on top of one of the boulders. "Why aren't you dead?" she hissed.

They'd been fighting for over an hour, the girl retreating, and Yahiko pursuing. She was fast, but he could keep up with her, and without the advantage of fighting in caves she was familiar with, the girl wasn't that difficult to corner.

Yahiko kept his sword between them, tensed for her to jump down at him. "You didn't use a stake, and you didn't take my head off. Of course I didn't die."

The girl, he still didn't know her name, jumped off the boulder, but not down towards Yahiko. Instead, she landed on a smaller rock to her right. Yahiko moved to his left to keep facing her.

He took another step, and lost his balance as his left foot plunged through the grassy sod and into a shallow narrow fissure with water at the bottom. It was one of those streamlets that carried melted ice down the mountainside, and he'd just discovered it the hard way.

"Now you die."

He heard her mouth the words, and barely got his sword up in time. Her knife clashed with his wakizashi blade, sliding down it to the tsuba, that rectangular piece of metal separating the hilt from the blade. She tried to knee him as she struck, but he moved unexpectedly, dropping his other foot into the fissure instead of trying to climb out of it, which would have knocked his balance further off.

As her knife blade met his tsuba, he straightened his arms suddenly, knocking her hands against her chest, throwing his full weight into the blow.

She staggered back, and when she did, he struck, slashing across her middle with the tip of his blade, drawing blood. He'd heard his wakizashi scrape against her ribs, and knew the cut must be painful.

He jumped out of the fissure and pressed his advantage, continuing to slash back and forth, herding her backwards. He didn't give her time to think, only to react. With her left arm pressing against the wound in her torso and her right clutching the knife, she was in no position to defend herself properly.

So she attacked. Waiting until one of his swings was at its far end, she aimed for the bicep crossing his body and lunged forward.

Yahiko saw it coming, and skipped back a step, twisting his blade downward at an angle over the bicep she wanted so that his face was framed in a perfect triangle made by the blade on one side and his bicep and forearm on the other two.

It was called the rainbow block, and it had one great advantage. Once the enemy had committed their forward motion and the blades touched, all you had to do was angle your blade downward, and the enemy's weapon slid toward the ground along your blade.

The next logical move was to whip the blade around and take your enemy's head off while they staggered forward, off balance, but Yahiko didn't want to kill her. Instead, he whipped his blade around, keeping the metal tip pointed in the air, and brought the hilt down on the back of her unprotected neck.

She dropped to her hands and knees, stunned, and tried feebly to raise her knife. Yahiko kicked it out of her hand. She fell flat, and rolled so she lay on her back, hands held protectively in front of her.

Seeing his chance to immobilize her so she'd have to stay still and listen to him, Yahiko threw his blade into the ground tip first and dropped on top of her.

Seizing her wrists, he pulled her hands apart and forced them into the grass on either side of her head. She struggled like a wild thing, frantically trying to buck him off and raise her arms from where he'd imprisoned them against the grass.

It didn't work, and eventually she gave up trying.

"Now, will you listen to me?" he asked, aggrieved that he'd had to endure her version of a bucking bronco ride.

"Just kill me so you can go back to killing humans," she spat the words at him, making angry noises in the back of her throat and pushing her wrists one last time against Yahiko's hands.

"Look, I don't want to kill you, and I don't go around killing humans. I need you to help me find the real killer, that guy who keeps dumping the bodies."

She stopped grimacing and looked at him, really looked at him in the eyes.

Her eyes were brown, with little golden flecks in them, and they were staring at him with a dull, defeated curiosity.

"What do you care about the humans? They're just food to you."

Yahiko frowned. "It's not like that. Some of my suppliers actually beg me to bite them," he bragged. So what if it was only that one time? The human girl had actually said 'please' that time, so that counted as begging, didn't it?

"Liar."

He supposed he should be insulted at being called a liar, but the way she said it, so hopeless, so despairing, tugged at him.

"Don't you remember when you got bit?" he asked curiously. He remembered when Battousai bit him. He was already in pain all over from being shot several times, but when those fangs broke his skin this curious warmth spilled out from the spot, and a sense of well-being. It was kind of like how one of his friends at school had described being high.

"No." she answered.

Yahiko blinked. "Oh yeah, you were drugged. I remember now. Sano told me. Look, I know you might not believe this because of what happened with you, but humans don't have to die or turn into vampires just because we bite them. Some actually like it. You don't have to drink them dry, you can make do with just a little blood."

Something in the girl's eyes sparked, and then died. "I don't believe you. I became a vampire when I was bit, and I the hunger nearly drives me insane every time a human comes near. If I ever started to drink, I don't think I'd be able to stop."

"Why not bite them then, and find out?" Yahiko asked flippantly, not wanting to let her know that Katsu had fed her his blood while she was unconscious. Something told him that she'd be even more pissed off about that. If she asked later on how she'd turned, he'd tell her, but not now.

A look of horror, revulsion, and longing crossed her face. "Don't say that! I refuse to do anything that horrible to another human being."

Yahiko relaxed his upper torso, which he'd held at arm's length above the girl in case she tried to bite, and moved his face closer to hers. "You're not a human being anymore." He held her gaze, watched the defeat cross her features.

"Who is Sano?" she asked quietly. "Is he the one who did this to me?"

"No, that was Katsu."

Her face clenched up and her brow furrowed. "Katsu," she repeated, letting her eyes drift past his shoulder into the starry night sky.

"If you're thinking of getting revenge, forget it. Katsu's dead." Her gaze snapped back at him, and he continued. "Sano's the one who woke you up the next night."

"Sano." The name came out as a snarl.

"Yeah, yeah, I hate that annoying rooster head too, but forget him. We've got a killer to catch."

Yahiko rolled off her and grabbed her knife, handing it to her hilt first.

She stared at it stupidly for a moment, then took it from him, sitting up, and clasping it firmly in her right hand. "Why are you giving this to me?"

Engrossed in yanking his wakizashi out of the ground and checking the blade for knicks and scratches, Yahiko didn't bother to turn around as he answered.

"I beat you. I won; you lost, so you owe me one. It's a vampire rule. I could've killed you, you know." Yahiko said, making up the rule as he went along. It's not like she'd know any different. He wondered if she believed that ridiculous legend about vampires turning into bats. Hmm, probably not.

There was a silence, so Yahiko looked over to find the girl still sitting where he'd left her, her head bowed over the knife she held in front of her, the hilt cradled in the palms of both hands and the blade pointed at her chest. The dark of the vampiric blood staining her tank top made the glistening blade stand out against her body in sharp relief.

"Hey, what's your name?" he asked her, not liking the stillness. It almost looked like she was going to stab herself like Juliet in that play he'd had to read in high school.

She raised her head. "Tsubame."

"I'm Yahiko." He sheathed his blade abruptly, thrusting it behind him in the sheath strapped to his back. "Let's go find a serial killer."

He stepped over to her and held out his hand.

Tsubame hesitated, then gripped the hilt of her knife in her right palm, and took his hand with her left, allowing him to pull her up from the ground.

Yahiko turned his back on her, and started off down the mountain. He took two steps, three, then four. There was only the quiet of the evening at his back, and then, a footstep, and another. She was following him, and for once she wasn't trying to stab him in the back.

Yahiko smiled and kept going.


	6. Chapter 6

CHAPTER SIX

He was short, like her, but with spiky black hair and a compact, muscled body. When he'd pinned her to the ground, it felt like being covered by a marble statue, hard, heavy, and cold. Not that hot or cold made much difference to her anymore.

He walked proudly, stomping through the late summer weeds with his head held high. He looked part Japanese. His eyes were big and dark brown, but slightly slanted at the edges and they were set in a boyish, Caucasian face. She'd seen his face up close when he'd lain on top of her.

It brought back a memory of that night, the night when her life changed forever. The flash of memory wasn't entirely unpleasant, but she hadn't liked the helpless feeling she got when she'd realized there was nothing she could do to get Yahiko off of her. In Yahiko's eyes she hadn't seen any sort of lust or sadism. He'd looked annoyed, yes. Angry, even, but not enraged. She realized that it comforted her, and felt foolish for allowing it to.

All the way down the mountain trails, Tsubame kept her eyes on the back of Yahiko's head. He had a good natural sense of direction, but he walked as if he didn't care that he was leaving tracks.

She wondered if he knew she'd been leading him in circles for the past month, hoping he'd get bored and go home. Finally, she let him catch up to her after she'd fed so she'd be strong when they battled. Luckily they'd fought near the trailhead where she'd first sensed him.

It was strange, that. The first time she'd sensed Yahiko she hadn't known what it was she was feeling. It was a kind of tingling awareness of a presence. It was different than her awareness of prey. Animals and humans both gave off a distinct odor. Even if she was downwind of them and they were completely still, if something in the bushes was watching her, she was able to sense that she was being watched. Vampires, it seemed, gave her another sort of awareness in the pit of her stomach rather than her brain.

The trailhead was nearby. Since they could move quicker than humans, and Tsubame knew a shortcut, they made it to the parking lot in under an hour.

Yahiko's car was a big, old-looking maroon Cadillac.

"I'd rather drive an SUV but they're not practical." He told her, opening the back door and tossing in his wakizashi and the backpack he'd caught up on the way down the mountain.

"Practical?" Tsubame asked.

Yahiko grinned. "Yeah, you know. SUV's don't have trunks." He slammed the door shut and walked around to the other side of the car.

Tsubame followed, thinking hard. It was difficult to get back in the habit of speaking. Her life for the past ten years or so involved acting and reacting, not communicating. Then it came to her. "You mean you sleep in the trunk of the car?"

"If I have to. Traveling sucks. When the sun comes up and there aren't any motels in sight, you got to do what you got to do to find shelter." Yahiko stopped in front of the passenger side door and opened it.

Blinking at the unfamiliarly gallant gesture, Tsubame ducked her head and got in. Yahiko slammed the door shut behind her, went round to the other side and got in the driver's seat. Seeing him reach over and pull on his seatbelt, Tsubame copied him. The seats were synthetic leather, slick and comfortable.

She jumped a little when Yahiko turned the key in the ignition and the scent of burning gasoline filled her nose. She'd forgotten how smelly cars were up close. Yahiko reached across her, opened the glove box, and took out a cassette tape, which he removed from its plastic casing and popped in the player in the dashboard. The strains of the Beach Boys' music filled the car.

"They still listen to the Beach Boys?" Tsubame asked wonderingly.

"I still do. Heck with the radio stations. Most music today is crap." Yahiko said absently as he twisted around to see while backing the car out of the lot and getting it on the road.

Feeling rebuked, Tsubame stayed quiet as Yahiko navigated his way down the mountain. He hummed along with the music as he drove. At the foot of the mountain he bought gas and left Tsubame in the car to make a phone call.

She leaned her head back and watched him in the phone booth. Outside the car, the gas station was near deserted. One bored attendant sat inside the small cashier's area of the mini mart, the gasoline smells and glassed in walls between them minimizing his scent. Other than that there was no one else around. How long did this vampire rule bind her to Yahiko? Once she helped him find the killer, was she then free? She didn't feel any different. Maybe it was a vampire courtesy thing, not a physical binding.

What was she doing here? In a car? Going to places with innocent people crowded around her, helpless against her? Beyond the circle of light from the fluorescent panels over the gas pumps and mini-mart lay the lowest slopes of the mountains leading back to her territory. She placed a fingertip on the smooth, cool glass of the passenger side window and looked out beyond the gas station longingly.

Yahiko finished his phone call, paid for the gas, and got back in the car. As soon as he turned the engine, the Beach Boys' music began again. They drove past signs and towns with names like Squaw Valley, Minkler, and Centerville. Yahiko changed tapes twice, to another Beach Boys' collection and then a Jan and Dean tape. And then they drove into Fresno.

The lights and greater number of cars was disturbing. Tsubame shut her eyes and concentrated on staying calm.

Eventually the car stopped. Opening her eyes, Tsubame saw that they were in the parking lot of a Motel 6.

"Stay here." Yahiko ordered unnecessarily, and got out, slamming the door behind him lightly and jogging over to the office.

He was back in a few minutes with the keys. He drove them to the back of the building and parked in front of a room at the end. Opening the driver side door, he slipped out quickly and started walking.

Tsubame automatically put her hand on the door handle, but paused when she realized Yahiko wasn't headed to the room, but to her side of the car. Bemused, she let him open the door for her.

"Why do you do that?" she asked hesitantly as she got out.

"Do what?"

"Open the door for me." Tsubame couldn't remember any of the few guys she'd gone out with in school ever doing that for her, and none of the guys at the office where she'd worked did that. Of course, if they had, girls like Meg and Sara would have chewed them out for being 'sexist'.

Yahiko gave a lopsided grin. "Because if I didn't my dad would kill me." Then he stopped and grimaced a little. "Not that he could anymore." He shrugged. "I guess old habits die hard," he said. Then he closed the car door, opened the back and retrieved his sword, backpack, and a duffel bag he'd left on the floor.

Wordlessly, she followed him to the motel room door, waited as he unlocked and pushed it open, and walked past him into the room.

The room was decorated in shades of gold, beige, and brown. Along the wall to the left was a long, low chest of drawers with a TV and remote on them. A doorway with an open door set in the wall led to a bathroom. To the right were the beds with gold colored polyester coverlets. She was thankful to see that there were twin beds, not a single one, and went and sank down on the edge of the one nearest the door. A tiny table and chair stood in the space between the bed and window.

Closing her eyes, she inhaled through her nose and smelled cleaner, an artificial pine scented disinfectant. The cold scent of the humans who'd been here before lay underneath it, a man and a woman with a baby. Below that was the smell of a single man who'd had fish scales on him, probably traveling back from a fishing trip, and below that…

"You want the shower first?"

Tsubame's eyes snapped open.

"Or take a bath? You can take a bath. I'm going to have to go out and get you some new clothes so I'll be gone awhile."

"Clothes?" repeated Tsubame.

Yahiko shifted his weight. "Well, you can't go around like that." He pointed to her stomach.

Looking down she saw the bloodstains crusted across her middle. The wound had already shut and was healing up. She'd gotten worse from bears and wildcats she'd drunk from in the mountains.

"How will you buy clothes? It must be past midnight."

"Sav-Ons are open 24 hours, and the clerk told me there's one down the street. They usually have t-shirts and stuff. What size are you?"

"Small. I'm a size four." Tsubame told him bemusedly.

"OK. I'll come back and stick the clothes on the floor of the bathroom when I get back." He raised his hands at her sharp stare. "I won't look, I swear it."

With that, he backed away toward the door and hastily went through it. Tsubame had the curious feeling that if normal blood still flowed through his veins, Yahiko would have been blushing. Suddenly she wasn't worried about him spying on her in the bathroom.

Pulling off her ruined tank top, she went to the bathroom and proceeded to have both a bath and a shower, thanking her lucky stars for the little soaps and shampoo and conditioner samples on the sink countertop.

She saw the door open a crack while she was rinsing the shampoo out of her hair and tensed, but as promised, Yahiko simply pushed a pile of clothing through the crack and shut the door again. She'd sensed vampire presence when he'd returned, but the running water all around her made it fuzzy seeming and odd.

Stepping out of the shower, she toweled her hair mostly dry and wrapped the dampened fabric around her middle. Her hands stilled in their motion of tucking the excess edge in at her breast. There were two voices coming from beyond the door outside the bathroom, and now that she concentrated, she felt two different vampire presences.

Part of Tsubame wanted to try to crawl down the shower drain with the draining water. Shaking the cowardly impulse off, she strode to the door, picking her knife out of the scabbard that she'd left on the sink countertop, and pulled the door open abruptly.

Two heads swiveled around to look at her. Yahiko was sitting on the bed by the door and across from him on the other bed was a taller, lanky vampire who looked around in surprise, then smirked when he saw her. He was a very familiar looking vampire.

"You!" Tsubame hissed, and lunged forward, knife blade poised to strike.


	7. Chapter 7

CHAPTER SEVEN

When Tsubame came out of the bathroom and tried to knife Sano, it couldn't have come at a worse time.

In a blur of motion, Yahiko jumped across the corner of Sano's bed and grabbed Tsubame's arm as her knife came down, arresting the blow.

"See," drawled Sanosuke "I told you she was feral."

"Knock it off, Sano!" yelled Yahiko, concentrating on keeping Tsubame's arm from lowering any more. She seemed transfixed by Sanosuke, who leaned back on his arms and chewed on a toothpick, watching them both with amusement.

"I'm not scared of you anymore." Tsubame growled at the older vampire, who simply grinned back at her insultingly.

Yahiko tightened his grip, not liking the determined hatred in Tsubame's eyes, or the way they were focused on Sanosuke like he was something she'd like to string up, draw, quarter, and put in a freezer for later.

"No one's scared of anyone here." Yahiko told her in a low, calming voice. "No one's going to hurt anyone, right Sano?" he threw the last question over his shoulder to his guardian.

"Sure, whatever you say." Sano conceded lazily.

Yahiko had just spent the greater part of the last ten minutes trying to convince Sano that Tsubame wasn't a deranged wild animal, and that she was coherent enough to help them identify and capture the human killer.

Sano had shown up right when Yahiko returned from Sav-On. The phone call he'd made was to Captain Sagara, who told him he'd sent Sanosuke to 'help' find the girl, and that he'd call Sano and have him meet Yahiko at the motel on the outskirts of Fresno. Yahiko figured Sano had been lingering in Fresno at one of the illegal gambling dens, waiting for Yahiko to do all the work finding Tsubame and then joining him later so he could hog the credit. What he hadn't known was that Sano had been sent by Sagara to kill Tsubame if she was too out-of-control.

He'd found out that little bombshell when Sano walked through the door carrying a wooden stake. He'd managed to argue Sano into putting the stake back in his car and come back inside to meet Tsubame when she'd opened the bathroom door and attacked.

"Please, Tsubame. Just put the knife down and go get dressed." Yahiko kept his voice soothing, and his grip strong.

She wrenched her gaze off Sano and looked at him searchingly. He could feel her arm muscles relax under his fingers as she nodded slowly. He released her and she stepped back, letting her knife hand fall to her side. Then without a word, she turned and stepped back into the bathroom, closing the door quietly behind her.

As Yahiko watched her go, he couldn't help but notice how short the towel was, and how shapely her legs were below it. Glancing over he saw Sano noticing him watching her, and immediately scowled.

"So, you still think she isn't feral?"

"Oh shut up," growled Yahiko.

OOO

When Tsubame exited the bathroom again she was wearing the dress Yahiko bought her. It was one of those 'one size fits all' type dresses with a gathered waist that lay loose against her hips, and a sleeveless buttoned up bodice with a 'V' neck. Because Tsubame was so small, the 'V' was a trifle deeper than she'd have liked when she was human, but it covered all the necessary parts, so she was resigned to it.

The colors weren't bad on her either. The light cotton print had a maroon background with a subtle asymmetrical pattern of black, brown, and amber swirls across it. The amber and browns matched her eye color almost perfectly, and she wondered if Yahiko had done that on purpose.

Along with the dress he'd left flip-flops, but they were too big. She grabbed up her hiking boots, then decided against putting them on. It was almost dawn, and she'd have to sleep soon. She doubted that Motel 6 would appreciate her sleeping in dirty hiking boots in their nice clean bed.

There was one item of clothing, however, that she would not do without. Pulling her belt out of her khaki shorts' belt loops, she buckled it on under the dress, and clipped the scabbard with its knife to it. The knife was non-negotiable.

When she came out of the bathroom, Yahiko was glaring at Sanosuke.

"Get your own room."

The taller vampire stretched out on the far bed and rested the back of his head on the hands he'd crossed on the pillow. "Why would I do that when you've got a perfectly good room right here?"

"Then go get a cot, and pay the extra charge."

"You go get one."

Yahiko's eyes narrowed. "Like I'd leave you alone in here with Tsubame!"

Tsubame's insides clenched, and she felt herself sinking into a defensive stance. If Sanosuke tried to lay one finger on her…

She saw Yahiko's head swivel over as he registered her presence. "Oh, Hi Tsubame. Rooster-head here was just leaving."

"Am not. Sagara said to stick close to you so I'm staying. Get over it, kid."

Tsubame had heard the phrase, 'made their blood boil' before, but she'd never seen an example of it. She imagined she saw steam rising from Yahiko's head as everything about him clenched.

Instinctively, she tried to diffuse the situation. "He can have my bed. I'll sleep on the floor."

Yahiko glanced at her in surprise, then turned a suspicious glare back at Sano. "No way. You're sleeping with me."

Now it was Tsubame's turn to clench up. He couldn't possibly mean…

"Um, I mean we'll just share the bed. Nothing else. I'll be between you and Sano that way, since I know you hate him and all."

Tsubame glanced back and forth between Yahiko and Sanosuke. Yahiko's face showed embarrassment and determination, while Sanosuke's held a sort of smirking watchfulness that unnerved her. Suddenly it didn't seem like such a bad idea to have Yahiko, who she knew was a skilled fighter, as a buffer zone between her and the older vampire.

"Alright," she said quietly, and walked over to the far side of the bed Yahiko was sitting on. She slipped quietly under the covers, her back to him. It was at least half an hour until dawn, but she didn't mind going to sleep early. The tension of being with other people and constantly trying to sift through their emotions was getting to her. Animals didn't try to deceive you, they just wanted to eat you or escape from you. Life was simpler in the wild.

For the next thirty minutes she lay still and felt Yahiko, who'd lain down on top of the covers, and Sano on the far bed glaring at each other. Then the edges of the thick drapes at the window lightened, her eyelids got heavy, and she was asleep for another dawn.

She woke the next evening to find that Yahiko had turned over in the night, and his arm was thrown over her side. His body was curled protectively against hers, and she could feel his forehead against the back of her head. She only had a minute before he woke as well, so she slipped out from under his arm and stood by the window, waiting.

He blinked sleepily, yawned, looked up, and saw her. "Hi Tsubame."

"Man, I'm hungry." Sano's voice came from the other side of the room. Looking over, Tsubame saw him dig into the pocket of his jeans and pull out some car keys, which he tossed over to Yahiko, who sat up and caught them reflexively. "Go get me some blood."

The keys went sailing back across the space between the two beds, and would have hit Sano in the nose if he hadn't raised a hand and caught them.

"Get it yourself." Yahiko flung back at him.

"Half of it's yours. It's been a month you know, you're due." Sano remained on the bed, his back against the headboard.

"Let me guess, tainted O Negative."

"Someone's got to dispose of the blood drive rejects, it might as well be us. I figure we're doing the Red Cross a service," said Sano smugly.

Yahiko made a disgusted noise and slid off the bed. "I still say, get it yourself."

"Whatever." Sanosuke stood up, crossed the room and exited through the door as Yahiko picked up the remote control and turned on the TV.

It was a local news program, and Tsubame sat at the edge of the bed and watched. There was a slight chance of showers tomorrow. The Miss Northern California pageant was only a week away and the contestants representing the local counties were being interviewed. A particularly stunning blonde with curly hair and blue eyes, wearing a sash across her form fitting dress, was smiling into the camera with a high voltage grin.

Tsubame rested her chin in her hands and stared, entranced. Reluctantly, she glanced down at her own small bosom, then back at the buxom golden haired woman on the screen. Even as an immortal vampire, she still felt inadequate next to that.

"You're much prettier than she is."

Tsubame raised her head and saw that Yahiko was staring at the screen as well. He continued to stare at it steadfastly as he continued. "I mean, those are obviously fake, and she probably had plastic surgery on her face too. She looks like a stupid Barbie doll."

He stole a glance at her and paused as Tsubame stared back wonderingly. Had Yahiko just made fun of a beauty queen to make her feel better?

Just then Sanosuke came back inside carrying two plastic bags full of red liquid. Yahiko busied himself digging in his backpack, and the moment passed.

"Hey brat, here you go." A bag sailed across Tsubame's line of sight and into Yahiko's hands.

Desire, longing, unquenched hunger flared in her chest.

"Want some?" Sanosuke's insolent question was her only warning, and then the other bag landed in her lap.

Tsubame reacted instantaneously, brushing it off onto the floor and throwing herself back along the length of the bed to crouch against the headboard. "Get it away from me," she bit out frantically.

Yahiko walked to the edge of the bed, leaned down, picked up the blood bag and threw it back at Sano. "I told you before, she doesn't drink human blood." He stated angrily.

"Guess I forgot. Her loss." Sano shrugged and ripped a hole in the bag with his fangs. Raising the bag above his head, he leaned back against the door and began to drink noisily.

Shuddering at the smell and sound, Tsubame rolled off the bed and ran to the bathroom. Slamming the door shut behind her, she sank to the floor and covered her ears with her hands. She sat there shaking until the smell of blood, and the temptation to go and grab the bag away from Sano or Yahiko, was gone.

When she came out, the TV was still on, and Sano and Yahiko were both transfixed by the story. On the screen, a well-groomed announcer was saying, "The body, which was recovered yesterday, was that of 14 year old Samantha Reynolds. Samantha disappeared two weeks ago from her home in Clovis, and her body was discovered in Sequoia National Park by hikers. Samantha's body is the first to be discovered in the Sequoias. The previous eight female bodies, all drained of blood, were found in the Sierra Nevadas. Police are not commenting, but experts say that other bodies may be found in the Sequoias as well."

Sanosuke leaned forward and shut off the TV. For the first time he looked at Tsubame with something other than contempt. "Well, I guess that clears you, since two weeks ago Yahiko was chasing you around the hills."

"Told you she was innocent." Yahiko said smugly.

Tsubame looked at the black screen. Before Sano had shut it off, they'd shown a picture of the girl, a red head with a pretty face and big blue eyes. That poor girl, only fourteen years old and her life was over already. Ducking her head, she came to a decision.

"I think I know where he came from," she said softly.

"Huh?" Sanosuke sat up straight, and Yahiko stared at her.

"The red jeep he drove. I followed him back to it one time. When he drove away from the trailhead I saw a bit of paper on the ground by where he'd parked. It was one of those receipts from a gas station in San Jose. I don't know if it was from his car or one of the others." What she didn't tell them about was the agonized deliberation, balancing the possible good murdering the man could do versus her selfish desire for blood. In the end, she'd let him go, believing that her hunger was coloring her judgment.

"That's great!" Yahiko burst out.

Sano smacked him on the head lightly.

"You say that now, but you haven't seen the size of San Jose. There could be hundreds of red jeeps there. It's not much of a clue." The words were derisive, but Tsubame saw something in the tall vampire's eyes that she hadn't expected. She saw a bit of hope.

OOO

Sanosuke left Tsubame and Yahiko in their new motel room in San Jose. Since it was also a Motel 6, the room setup and décor was almost an exact copy of the one in Fresno. Once he'd dumped his stuff on a bed, Sano went outside to call Sagara on his cell phone, glad to be away from the mountains where the service was spotty.

"It's me," he said when the captain answered.

"Report." ordered Sagara calmly.

"I found Yahiko and the girl. She's feral alright, tried to attack me on sight."

There was a silence, and then Sagara spoke. "Will she be of any use in finding the human?"

Sanosuke stuck the sole of his cowboy boot against the motel wall and leaned against it, thinking. If he said no, Sagara would order him to kill her and be done with it.

If he said no, they'd lose the only vampire who'd ever seen the killer's face.

If he said no, he'd have to fight off Yahiko, who had the unsettling tendency to try to bite him on the head whenever they'd fought before because he knew Sano was particular about his hair.

Sanosuke sighed. "Yeah. She's useful for now. She found a receipt from a San Jose gas station. We're at a motel a block down from it."

"Good. There's something you should know, Sanosuke. One of Winston's suppliers knows someone in the LAPD. Rumor has it that the bodies they've recovered were frozen at some point. They haven't released that information to the press yet."

"People popsicles?" Sanosuke laughed softly and mirthlessly. "That's pretty sick."

"Hm." Sagara agreed.

"Hey, what's up with our 'pals up North' here.? You want me to update them?" Paying your respects to the vampire whose territory you were visiting was more than a courtesy, it was expected.

"No. Katsura's messenger, Izuka, asked that we keep this favor to them confidential. Walking into Katsura's territory and bringing it up may be exactly what they want us to do, an excuse to attack us for not honoring our agreement to help in secret."

"How are things back home?" Sanosuke asked.

It hurt to be away from Sagara, to know that if something happened, he wouldn't be there to protect the vampire who'd saved him. The captain looked him up years after Sagara became a vampire. He'd found Sano battered and bloodied from a street fight, one that he'd fought with Kanryuu's thugs. They'd had guns, and Sagara turned Sano in order to save him.

Sanosuke didn't want to think too hard about the kind of punk he would have become without Sagara to reawaken the dream in him. After the Meiji officials betrayed the Sekihoutai, Sano survived and kept his sanity by fighting, giving his hatred an outlet.

Sagara changed all that. Together, they'd protected the poor and the weak in the darkness of the night, until they'd been driven out of Japan. And if sometimes the price of that protection was a little blood, the peasants, hypnotized into forgetting, were none the worse for it.

Over the years, the Meiji government, which ruled during their human lives, gave way to a military oligarchy which controlled the emperor. After World War II the government changed again, and all vampire groups in Japan, not just those calling themselves the Meiji group, had been driven into the shadows of the criminal underworld. Then the group calling itself the 'new Tokugawa' arose and drove both the Meiji vampires, and Sagara's group, named the Sekihoutai in honor of his fallen comrades, out of Japan. When Sagara asked Sanosuke to go with him, he'd jumped at the chance. He hadn't been able to save Sagara from human death when he'd been a child and the Meiji government betrayed the leader of the human Sekihoutai army, but he'd made it his business since then to protect Sagara. That's why he hated this job. It took him away from his real duty.

"Things are quiet."

"You're keeping the leadership team around you, aren't you?" Sano hated the way he sounded, like a mother asking her kid if he remembered to bring a warm coat.

There was a trace of amusement in Sagara's voice as he answered. "Yes, the team is here with me. Good hunting, Sano." he said, then hung up.

"Good hunting. Yeah right." Sano closed the phone and went back into the motel room.

OOO

They spent a week observing the gas station down the street. Tsubame sat for hours in a chair by the motel window, just watching without moving a muscle. It weirded Sano out. When she needed food, she'd get up abruptly and ask Yahiko to sit and watch for the red jeep, then leave without another word, returning with the smell of animal blood around her mouth. Sano hoped she was smart enough to not leave dual fang marks on the necks of the stray mutts she drank from. Too many marks like that on animals was a dead giveaway.

"He's here." Tsubame's voice was quiet, but certain.

Yahiko and Sano stopped arguing over which TV program to watch and crowded around her at the window.

Down the street, a candy apple red jeep with a roll bar pulled up to the gas station, and a guy with blondish brown hair got out, pulling his wallet from his back pocket. He wore khaki pants and a brown leather bomber-style jacket.

Sano glanced down at the top of Tsubame's head. She was staring calmly through the window, her hands neatly folded in her lap.

"How can you be sure it's him?" Sano asked doubtfully. "You said you didn't see the license plate."

"It's him," she answered calmly. "I remember his smell."

"His smell?" Yahiko cocked his head at her. "But you're inside and he's outside. How can you…?" He trailed off as Tsubame raised a hand from her lap and pointed to the edge of the window where the window frame met up with the motel's outer wall.

Sano looked as well and saw that the window was cracked open about an inch where the grey rust-spotted screen was showing between the frame and the glass.

"Through there." Tsubame said, and glanced at Yahiko curiously. "Can't you smell it too?"

Yahiko shook his head. "You can scent him from this far away? That's so cool."

Sano sighed inwardly. "That's what ferals do, brat." He told him. "They're more animal than vampire."

"Take that back!" Yahiko rounded on the taller vampire furiously.

Smirking, Sano let his expression add fuel to Yahiko's fire, daring him to attack.

"He's leaving." Tsubame placed her hand on Yahiko's sleeve absently as she stared out the window, no longer phased by Sano and Yahiko's ongoing squabbles.

"Crap!' Sano exclaimed and burst out the door, pulling his keys from his pocket.

"Wait for me!"

Glancing behind him, Sano saw Yahiko close on his heels, pulling Tsubame along by the hand.

Clicking the 'unlock' button on his keychain, he slipped quickly behind the wheel as the two younger vampires got in the back.

"Take your own car, brat," he growled, mainly from habit.

"Yours is faster." Yahiko said simply. Tsubame, as usual, said nothing at all. She really gave him the creeps.

Shrugging it off, Sano gunned the motor of his black sports car and pulled out of the parking space. "We'd better not be going far. My trunk's not big enough for all three of us."

The jeep headed away from the center of town and out towards the foothills. They drove in silence, Sano keeping two or three cars between them with ease until the truck cut in front of them at a yellow light and decided to stop.

"Kuso!"

Feeling Tsubame's curious stare, Sano hit the steering wheel and glowered. Cars were whizzing by in a steady stream to his left, going the opposite direction on the two-lane road, and to his right were parked cars. They were boxed in.

"It's a Japanese cussword." Yahiko explained. "Rooster head uses them when he's really annoyed."

"Oh."

"If you two are finished with the vocabulary lesson, then shut up so I can figure out how we're going to find him again." Sano tried to glare a hole through the back of the truck in front of him. Then he started as the night air touched his neck.

Craning around, he saw that Tsubame had opened a window and was inhaling, her eyes closed and her eyebrows meeting as her brow furrowed in concentration.

"He's turned left," she whispered.

"He did not turn left at the signal. I would have seen him."

The human prey drove slowly, actually going the speed limit all the time, and he'd always used his turn signals. Before the truck cut off Sano's line of sight, he'd seen the jeep at the crosswalk with no signal light blinking.

"Not this one, the next one."

"Whoa. How do you do that?" came Yahiko's awed question.

Sano watched as Tsubame pulled her nose away from the open window and sank back in her seat to answer. "I couldn't, usually, but he's in an open car. His scent is in the air."

Not liking the approving grin Yahiko was giving the petite girl, Sano swung back around to face front. Yahiko was a pain, but he didn't want him getting too attached to Tsubame since they'd just have to kill her once they were done using her skills.

He stole another glance at the two in the back seat. To look at them, you'd almost think they were high school kids without licenses being driven to the movies by a parent. Yahiko's shrimpy stature would always ensure that he looked young, and that ridiculous over-large dress he'd bought the girl made her look like a little kid playing dress up in her mother's clothes.

Then the signal changed and he drove on, taking the left turn Tsubame pointed out to him, and gunning the engine to catch up to his prey. Sure enough, there he was, making a right uphill towards the foothills.

They passed through rows of old style bungalows with manicured lawns. Gradually the bungalows gave way to larger homes, old style Victorians and pseudo Tudors. At the base of a hill right before a golf course was an old Catholic church complete with a red tiled roof and a bell tower. Sano felt a superstitious shudder go through him.

He almost missed it when the jeep took a sharp right into the church parking lot. No, it wasn't the parking lot, it was a lane leading up the hill between the church and the golf course.

Sano let the white sedan he'd been keeping between himself and the red jeep drive by, and followed it past the opening of the lane, but executed a quick u-turn and drove back, parking across the street from it.

Quickly, he turned off the ignition and killed the headlights. Turning in his seat, he squinted up the steep driveway and saw the light haired jeep driver pulling a card out of a tall stone box shaped like the sort of pillar that hid mailboxes. Most mailboxes didn't have keypads and lights on them that flashed green and opened automated wrought iron fences halfway up their driveways. This one did.

The jeep drove through and the gate closed smartly behind it. It disappeared and reappeared under tree boughs from tall oaks that clustered on either side of the steep lane. Sano raised his eyes and saw rooftop over the trees, and not just one rooftop, but three pitched roofs, interconnected with no less than four chimneys. The jeep belonged to a mansion, and where there were mansions there were security systems and maybe even guard dogs.

Sano sighed. "We're going to need backup for this one."


	8. Chapter 8

Disclaimer: I don't own the plot or characters of Rurouni Kenshin

A/N: This chapter is a bit long, but at least Battousai finally shows up in it.

Thanks so much to Nekotsuki and Lolopopoki for all your reviews and support!

CHAPTER EIGHT

Tsubame gave a little sigh of longing.

Yahiko heard it and glanced at her curiously. Sano just admitted that he needed backup. Usually that would have given Yahiko just the chance he needed to ride the rooster head about how inept he was at breaking and entering. A bull in a china shop had more finesse than Sano, who hated dealing with any technology that didn't have to do with fast cars or entertainment systems.

Tsubame was staring ahead of the car at the sidewalk, while Sano was glaring at the mansion on top of the hill, so Yahiko noticed the man with the dog coming down the walk before he did.

It was an old guy with a brimmed tweed cap, dark pants, and a cable-knit sweater. The dog was a jack Russell terrier prancing along at the end of a leash.

Sano began muttering to himself about having to call Sagara when the old guy came up, staring curiously at them through the car windows. He turned to tell Sano they should probably get going when he noticed Tsubame staring longingly at the dog.

The old guy stopped, leaned over suddenly and tapped his knuckles on the front passenger side window.

Sano scowled, but rolled the window down automatically by pressing a button.

"Yeah?"

"You reporters?" the old guy asked.

Yahiko noticed that he had a tan, wrinkled face with sharp blue eyes, eyes that scoured the inside of the car at a glance and focused back on Sano.

"Why would you think we're reporters? Is there something going on around here?" Yahiko asked quickly. Maybe the cops were already onto the guy in the jeep.

"No," Sano answered the old man's question with a quelling look at Yahiko. "We're not reporters, why do you ask?"

The man stared at them a second, then seemed to come to a conclusion. "No reason, it's just that we had camera crews around here a while back wanting to interview Miss Murphy," he said, nodding up at the mansion.

"That so?" Sano returned lazily. "Why would they do that?"

"You mean a girl lives up there?" Yahiko burst in. Sano was such an idiot. If he insulted the old guy by acting like a jerk, then the old guy would walk away and they wouldn't get any information.

"Miss Murphy the younger, yes." Sharp blue eyes focused on Yahiko. "Miss Murphy the elder, she died a while back. She was from old money, you see. Took in her grandniece and grandnephew when their parents passed on. It was no life for two young kids, shut up in that mansion. That Miss Murphy the elder was old school. 'Ladies and gentlemen do not go out without chaperones' and nonsense like that. Shame too, since the girl was such a looker. No wonder she wants so bad to get herself on TV nowadays."

"On TV?" Sano broke in, his voice betraying a bit more interest.

The man switched his gaze to the older vampire. "Yep. Our Miss Murphy is the frontrunner for the Miss Northern California contest. Can't say as I approve of young women gallivanting about in their bathing suits for a contest, or at least not when my wife's around, but I don't blame her for wanting to get out of that mansion from time to time. Since her great aunt died, that brother of hers keeps a pretty firm leash on her."

At the word 'leash' the terrier sitting patiently by the old man's side let out a bark.

His master grinned down at him. "Yeah, you know that word, don't you?" he asked the dog, who thumped his tail in quick succession against the sidewalk. The old man pulled back from the car. "Well, I'd best get on with my walk. And you with your drive. Several folks around here pay for a security patrol, and it's due by here any minute. So even if you aren't reporters, I'd skedaddle if I were you."

Tipping the brim of his hat at Tsubame in the back seat, he stepped back and resumed walking, the little dog jumping up and falling in at his side.

Yahiko noticed Tsubame's eyes following the pair down the sidewalk with an expression he recognized very well.

"We've got to eat." Yahiko blurted out.

"Later." said Sano, turning the ignition key.

"No, now." Yahiko grabbed Sano's shoulder to get his attention and glared speakingly into his eyes when he turned in irritation.

"There are ducks in the golf course ponds." Tsubame suggested.

After a brief argument, Sano pulled back onto the lane, found a pullout by the golf course, and parked. Tsubame was out of the car in a flash, and over the hedge bedecked wall before he even turned the ignition off.

Yahiko and Sano stared at each other across the back of the driver's seat.

"You feel like duck tonight?" he asked.

"Naw."

"Me either."

Sighing, they settled back to wait.

OOO

Sanosuke dropped the two younger vampires off at the motel, but stayed in the car to make a phone call.

"Yes?" came Sagara's voice as the call connected.

"It's me. We found him."

There was a sigh. "And?"

Sano leaned back against his seat. "And it's not going to be easy. He lives in a rich neighborhood with security patrols. There's a sister, and she's a bit of a local celebrity. Beauty pageants, I think. We can't just beat him up and leave him on the steps of the police station gift-wrapped. If we kill him, well, the family's got money to cover up what he did, and getting through whatever security system they might have…you know how I am with surveillance cameras."

Sano practically heard Sagara wince as he answered. "I remember." There was a silence, then Sagara continued slowly. "I think it's time to call in a professional."

"Who?" Sano asked, mentally going down the list of Sekihoutai vampires who had experience with modern day breaking and entering.

"An outsider. Battousai."

Sano just about dropped the phone. "Battousai? But he's Meiji."

"He was Meiji when he was alive," Sagara reminded Sano calmly, "but he's been an independent contractor for over a hundred years now."

"He used to take orders from Katsura. Word is, they're still friendly, so why didn't Katsura ask for Battousai to take care of the human in the first place?"

"Good question. It would have been the logical thing to do. Katsura's messenger made the favor sound like a test."

Sano narrowed his eyes. "A test as in seeing how strong our warriors are so he'd know if we could withstand an attack?"

"Perhaps. Izuka made it clear he didn't want any further communication between our two sides until the deed was done, but he didn't say anything about outside assistance."

Sano felt a slow grin tug at his lips. "And since everybody knows that once Battousai takes a job he won't double-cross whoever hired him…"

"If Katsura wants to lure my strongest up North where he can pick them off one at a time, he'll have Battousai to contend with."

Sano's grin broadened, then faded. "But what about you?"

"I'll be fine, Sanosuke." Humor and certainty came through in his voice. "We're on alert, and Keisuke has come up with several contingency plans. Wait there for Battousai to join you. I hear he's in New York. If he takes the job, he'll be there in two nights."

"Gotcha. Take care, Captain."

"And you, Sanosuke."

OOO

Another night came and went. Sano told them that 'backup' was coming and they should just settle down to wait. Despite Yahiko's cajoling, he wouldn't say more than that.

Without watch duty, Tsubame had nothing to do but sit around the motel and listen to Sano and Yahiko squabble.

At first it disturbed her, the loud voices and stinging insults. Sanosuke loved to get Yahiko all riled up, and Yahiko's pride wouldn't allow him to let things go without a rejoinder. It came as a shock to realize in the middle of one of their fights, that they were competing to see who could come up with the worst insult, and that they were actually enjoying the competition.

She didn't want to see the gleam of appreciation in Sano's eyes when Yahiko came up with a particularly cruel remark about Sano's hair. She didn't want to realize that Yahiko quarreled so naturally with Sano because he was confidant of the older vampire's friendship, for they were friends, for all their arguing. It made it that much harder to hate Sano.

She'd given up hating Yahiko the minute she started believing his wild tale about how you could drink from humans and not kill or turn them. How could she hate him when all he did was look out for her, cradle her unconsciously in his arms during the daytime, and defend her against Sano's snide remarks?

The remarks didn't bother her, much. She was feral. An animal. A monster. Everything Sano said was true, and just because she refused to drink human blood didn't mean that she didn't want to. She could sense the humans in the rooms next to theirs, feel them going out to their cars and coming back at night. It was only sheer willpower that kept her in the car when that man and his dog were talking to Sanosuke and Yahiko. The worst part was, she didn't know if she'd opened the car door, which one she would have gone for, the human or the pet.

She was sitting at the small round table by the window, more from habit than anything else, when the knock came at the door.

Sano came off the bed and opened it immediately. There in the doorway stood a man she'd never seen before. He was quiet and unassuming looking, despite his red hair, pulled back in a loose ponytail. It was a beautiful shade of red, darker than a fox's coat, but not black-red, not like vampiric blood.

His eyes took in the room in a second. They were an odd shade of blue, almost violet, startling against his pale skin - his very pale skin, which was symptomatic of a vampire. With a start, Tsubame realized that she couldn't sense him as she could Sano or Yahiko. He smelled of vampire, but that tingling in the pit of her stomach that usually told her another vampire was present, wasn't there. He was masking it somehow.

She heard Sano greeting him, and glanced over to see what Yahiko would say. Yahiko was staring at the newcomer with shining eyes, and a hopeful smile. He looked very young, and star struck. It almost made her smile in reaction.

"Battousai," sighed Yahiko, as if all was well now that he'd come.

"Yahiko." The stranger inclined his head formally and stared back, reserved, but with a trace of kindness.

"Come in." Sano stepped back and pulled the door open wider.

"Thank you," the vampire, no, the 'Battousai', said and crossed the threshold. Battousai was a title, judging by the way Yahiko said it. Tsubame stayed seated and waited for them to remember her.

In the wilds, she could sit so still that birds flying home for the night would perch on her head. Birds were tiny, without much blood, so she'd let them sit and fly away in safety. Battousai was not a clueless bird. His gaze locked on hers the minute he crossed into the room. Tsubame looked away.

"How have you been? Where have you been? Why didn't you come back?" Questions burst forth from Yahiko like water from the floodgates of a dam, stopping only when Sano smacked the back of his head.

"Give it a break, Yahiko. Battousai's here to help."

"You're our backup?"

"That I am." said the red-haired vampire. His voice was light but strong. "And who is this?" he asked. Tsubame didn't need to look up to know that he was talking about her.

"Oh," Yahiko lunged across the bed and landed with a thump in front of her chair. Grabbing her hand, he hauled her out of it and drew her forward. "This is Tsubame," he said, as much pride in his voice as if he were showing off a favorite pet or a science fair project that had just won first prize.

Tsubame kept her gaze firmly on the ground. She could sense the solidness of the Battousai, could smell his scent, but she still couldn't detect his vampire's aura. There was one thing all of her instincts were screaming at her that she couldn't ignore. This vampire was powerful, and dangerous. She could tell by the way he stood, his feet apart, knees slightly bent, seemingly relaxed but ready to strike in any direction like a coiled spring. It was the way of wildcats, which could go from a relaxed lounge to a lightning tackle of their prey in seconds.

She wished Yahiko had left her in the chair.

"I am pleased to meet you, Tsubame." came the soft voice.

She nodded and stepped back, pulling her hand out of Yahiko's.

Stealing a quick look at him from under her bangs, she saw disappointment cross Yahiko's face. He'd wanted them to like each other.

It was too much.

It was hard enough getting used to two other people in her living space. Now she had to contend with three. Even though she'd come to trust Yahiko to an extent, she still found herself staying between him and the door most of the time. She felt better knowing that an escape route was open to her. With this vampire, she knew she'd have to compete for the honor of being the one closest to the exit.

"So, you want to go take a look at the house?" asked Sanosuke, breaking the awkward silence.

"Yes." The soft voice replied.

They all piled into Sano's car with Sano at the wheel, Battousai riding shotgun, and Yahiko and Tsubame in back.

Surreptitiously, she closed her eyes and inhaled Battousai's scent, and the ones on his clothes. There was airline recycled air smell, the lingering scent of unfamiliar humans who'd brushed by him, not knowing the danger in their midst, and rental car air freshener smell.

Opening her eyes, she saw him glance back at her, and thought she saw a flash of humor in his eyes before he turned back around to assure Sano that he knew all about the situation and the need to make it clear the human was the one killing the girls and draining their blood.

Driving back to the mansion seemed to take a shorter time than it had before, now that they knew where they were going. As they pulled up to the drive, Sano slowed down past the church.

In the driveway, a small green Chevy was parked, blocking access. Two Hispanic women in pink polyester uniforms, as nondescript as institutional nurse uniforms from decades ago, walked down from the gate and got into the car, which reversed in order to get back onto the lane.

"Keep driving." Battousai's voice directed Sano.

"Looks like the hired help is off for the evening." Yahiko observed.

"Maybe for the weekend. It is Friday." Sano reminded him.

The word triggered something in Tsubame's mind, something from the TV news. She tugged on Yahiko's sleeve.

Surprised, he turned to look at her.

"Monday is when the pageant starts."

"Huh?"

"The sister. She's going to be in the pageant, remember? It starts Monday."

"So maybe it's only him up there." Sano commented, not in the least concerned that he'd been eavesdropping. "That'd be a plus. I hate hypnotizing witnesses to forget."

"If it's necessary. I will do it." Battousai promised.

They drove to the end of the street, which dead-ended into a 'T' shaped intersection at the far end of the golf course.

"So, do you want me to swing around and come back?" Sano asked.

Battousai shook his head, his red bangs rustling slightly as he did so. "No. Turn right. We'll park and cross the golf course."

"That way no one will remember our car being parked across from the mansion. Geez Sano, I thought you were smart." Yahiko taunted.

"Shut up, brat." Sano barked back amiably.

"No more quarrelling." Battousai's voice was quiet, but the note of command was unmistakable.

Yahiko subsided at once, and even Sano merely smirked and shut his mouth.

They drove in silence, parking the car under an oak that hung over the wall, creating a pocket of shadows, perfect for concealing a car.

"So, what now?" Sano asked, conceding authority to the red headed vampire with an ease that surprised Tsubame.

"We go to the house and see what's to be done." Battousai answered easily.

"You're not one for detailed plans, are you?" Sano asked.

"Situations change. Only goals remain the same." A glance passed between them, and Sano ducked his head in agreement.

As they got out of the car, he paused. "What about her?" he jerked his head toward the back seat, where Tsubame had opened her car door, not waiting for Yahiko to do it for her. She froze. What about her? She thought they'd wanted her help.

Battousai leaned into the car, searching her with his eyes. "She's the only one who can identify him by smell, correct?"

"Yeah," came Sano's reluctant agreement.

"You bet!" was Yahiko's cheerful response.

"Then she comes with us."

Tsubame felt as though she'd been weighed and found acceptable. It was ridiculous, really, the glow of satisfaction she felt at the thought. The Battousai was dangerous; she could never let her guard down around him, so why did his approval seem to matter? If she were honest, she'd have to admit that it was because Yahiko valued the man's opinion, and she'd started to value Yahiko.

Wrenching her mind away from that unwelcome thought, she walked around the back of the car, gathered herself, and leapt over the golf course wall, landing in a crouch on the smooth, thick grass on the other side.

Instinctively, she touched the knife belted by her leg under her skirt. As she glanced over and watched Sano land last, she saw Battousai touch the hilt of a sword sticking out of his belt on his left side. He must have stashed it in Sano's car before entering the motel. That thought in itself was worrisome. Had he thought so little of her as a threat that he'd left his weapon outside when he met her? Or was it simply that a sword is difficult to conceal and he'd wanted to hide it?

Then they were running across the golf course and she had no time to think, only to feel the wind in her hair and her legs moving faster than a human's, touching down on the grass only to give impetus to a run that was more flight than pounding of earth.

Soon they were leaping the far wall of the golf course and were on the mansion grounds. Tsubame didn't have to be told to keep to the shadows. Hunting is what she did best. She felt where the other vampires were, all except Battousai, so she kept him in sight. They flitted from tree to tree until Battousai held up his hand.

They sank back behind their respective trees and waited while he became a shadow and slid up to the house. There was a spark, and a surveillance camera winked out and died in its mount on the corner. If she hadn't been a vampire, Tsubame wouldn't have seen the Battousai shadow slink down by the French doors leading out to a flagstone patio area. Light spilling from windows on the upper storey helped.

He leaned over and up above to the lintel, and seemed to be fiddling with something. Then he stopped and motioned them forward. They came at a run, stopping at the French doors. His eyes glittered amber in the starlight as he glanced at each of them. Then he cracked the door open, with the faint hiss of a climate-controlled house, and Tsubame fell to her knees.

Blood smell, warm, inviting, liquid, and so much of it!

So much all concentrated in one place, and it was all upstairs with the scent of humans. Humans and blood, blood and humans, and all her longing hunger was overwhelming her.

"Tsubame?" Yahiko's concerned whisper penetrated the haze of need that had her clutching her stomach, hunched over in the pain of wanting and not having.

She cracked open eyelids she didn't even remember shutting, and saw him leaning over her, worry radiating from him in an almost palpable wave.

"There's so much blood," she whispered back to him. "I can't…I can't stand it."

"She's right." Battousai's voice was cold, expressionless. "I smell it too."

He knelt suddenly by her side, left hand on his hilt, angling the sword back and behind him so it wouldn't scrape on the flagstones. "I sense two people inside. I need to know which one is the man you saw in the jeep. Can you tell me?"

Tsubame bit her lip. She was leaning against the building, legs bent and knees in front of her face, clutching her stomach. Shuddering, she closed her eyes again and flared her nostrils, forcing herself past the scent of blood to other scents. They were so weak compared to the rich, intoxicating smell, but they were there.

"Two humans," she whispered softly. "One near the blood. Not him. The other downstairs. A basement? That one is him."

She opened her eyes. "I can't go in there."

Battousai rose to his feet. "You don't have to. Yahiko, stay with Tsubame and keep watch. Sano?"

"I'm going with you." Sano said challengingly. "Sagara gave this job to me. I'm going to see it through. Besides," a grin colored his voice. "You never know, you could end up using my help."

Glancing up, Tsubame saw Battousai nod politely and step through the open French doors. Sano followed seconds later, his face set and more serious than she'd ever seen it. That left Yahiko.

He hadn't objected to being left behind, as she'd expected. Instead, he sat cross-legged, the edge of his sheathed wakizashi scraping lightly against the flagstones as he sat. He wore it strapped to his back, the way he had when he'd been hunting her. He watched her quietly, distressed.

She didn't want him to be distressed over her. She wanted…She wanted blood. Gripping her middle tightly, she felt another wave of longing hurtle through her stomach, and started rocking back and forth in reaction.

Warmth, and motion against her back began to register through the pain of hunger. Yahiko was rubbing her back. Surprise and gratitude shot through her, but were soon lost in the overwhelming need.

She didn't know how long she sat there, shaking and wanting before the cry came. It was Sano's voice, in agony, and it barely penetrated up from the lower floor, but her vampire ears picked it up, and so did Yahiko's.

Glancing up, she saw his worry turn to resolve as he stared through the open doors. He glanced over and saw her.

"I have to go."

"I know." Sanosuke was his friend. Yahiko was torn between staying to comfort her and making sure that his friend was all right. "Go," she said. "I'll be fine."

"You're sure?"

She nodded. "Go," she said again, and he jumped to his feet and began running soundlessly into the house.

She lasted a minute, maybe two before the call of the blood became too strong to ignore. Reaching out her hand, she grasped the doorframe and hauled herself to her feet, then staggered across the threshold and into the house where the scent of blood led her across a deep oriental carpet, past sofas and tables with fresh cut flowers, to the foot of a set of smooth mahogany stairs.

Licking her lips, she took the first step closer to her goal.


	9. Chapter 9

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin characters.

Thanks to Lolopopoki, Nekotsuki, and Iknownot for reviewing my story.

CHAPTER NINE

Sano followed Battousai into the mansion. Who was he kidding? Maybe he could help Battousai? That was funny. The vampire making his way quickly but cautiously through the first floor rooms was a legendary assassin. He was the one you called when one of the vampires in your territory started running amok. He's the one you called when you had to get rid of monsters. And yes, there were other things that went bump in the night besides vampires.

Sano had even heard rumors that human governments had called upon Battousai to take out leaders of terrorist cells. The only job Battousai wouldn't take were ones involving innocent human lives, or ones from vampires he didn't like or trust. That he'd accepted Sagara's job offer at all was a huge honor for the captain.

A reluctant grin crossed Sano's face. He should be happy Battousai was even letting him tag along. He'd known of the man by reputation when both were still human, and had met him once in Japan. Sano learned from some criminal associates that a human named Jineh was after Battousai, hungry to kill him and enhance his own reputation.

Sagara sent him to tell Battousai that Jineh was after him, and that Jineh had a reputation for using hostages in order to get to his prey. That really steamed Sano. He would never stoop so low as to use hostages to get to someone.

When he finally managed to track down Battousai, he found that the vampire already knew about Jineh. Embarrassed, Sano left abruptly after blurting out his information. A night later, Battousai tracked him down, and thanked him. Sano protested that he hadn't actually done anything, but if he ever could in the future, he'd do it. He hadn't expected Battousai to take him up on the offer, but that's how he'd got saddled with Yahiko. The brat was obnoxious, proud, and always out to prove himself around the older vampires. He reminded Sano of himself.

Battousai made his way to the kitchen. Sano's senses weren't as alert as the assassin's, but he could sense a human below.

The redhead stopped at a large island worktable in the center of the room, and glanced left. Sano followed his line of sight past two large stainless steel refrigerators and a wine rack to a door painted to look like more cabinets. From the handle hung a padlock, twisted open.

Battousai moved over to it, removed the padlock and pulled the door open. Beyond the doorway were steps leading down to the basement. Battousai moved his right arm across his body and let his right hand hover over the hilt of his sword, ready to pull it out and strike. He glanced over at Sano, nodded, and started down the stairs.

Sano followed, stepping carefully where Battousai's feet had landed. Not one step squeaked. At the bottom of the staircase they found themselves in a gym with a linoleum floor and weight equipment positioned across it. At the far end of the room was a widescreen TV and an open space with mats laid out before it.

The room was deserted. Why lock up a weight room? Unless you didn't want the staff using it. Sano shrugged to himself. Rich people were weird.

He was ready to turn around and see if there wasn't another basement under the next wing, when Battousai started moving again, drifting soundlessly to the far wall. Against it were the more common basement sorts of implements. An old coal furnace, dusty and disused, sat next to a modern electric one. Tanks, huge ones for storing hot water, stood up like columns supporting a temple roof. Between two of the tanks was a thin crack of light between the wall and the floor. It was a door.

Inhaling, Sano caught the smell of blood and human mixed together, along with other scents common to basements.

Battousai was already at the door, the fingers of his left and right hands seeking around the edges for a clasp, but there was nothing. He stepped back and looked again. Sano did too, but saw nothing out of the ordinary in the cracked plaster by the hidden door. There was nothing that remotely resembled a doorknob.

Suddenly Battousai dropped to his knees and reached behind one of the tubular water tanks and pulled on a lever identical to the one in front that regulated water temperature.

The door swung ajar, creating a thin rectangle of light on the floor. Battousai shrank against the water tank, placing his hand over his hilt again, and used his left hand to push the door further open.

It was like walking into a space-aged spa, or a very stylish hair salon. The floor was marble. In the center was a circular depression with four steps leading down it into water. Under the water the floor of the small indoor pool was imbedded with tiny bits of tile in plaster, the colored bits making up cherubs and cloud patterns. Sano had seen pictures of things like that in archeological magazines. It was a roman style sunken bath.

Directly to their left was a wall with hooks for towels. The wall rose to the ceiling for a few feet, then dipped down into a three quarters high partition, which ended before reaching the far wall.

Directly to their right by the door was a huge freezer, and along the far right hand side wall was a massage chair straight out of a Sharper Image catalog. A glassed in cabinet sporting various oils, lotions, and what looked like a jar of mud was just beyond the massage chair, and beyond that was a set of marble steps leading up to…Sano tried to remember the layout of the mansion and guessed it was the garage.

Sano gaped for a second, then noticed where Battousai's eyes were, at the shorter part of the wall to their left. Across from where the wall ended was a huge plastic tube with a curved rectangular hatch running down the side. It was translucent, and there was a long bed-like table on the inside.

From behind the left hand wall came noises, and the smell of blood.

Battousai moved over and crept slowly, relentlessly forward past the towels hanging down like shrouds from the hooks in the wall. Sano followed as the redhead came to the end of the shorter wall and rounded it, stopping between the wall's ending point and the tube-like structure against the far wall.

What Sano saw when he came out from behind the wall was like something out of a horror film.

The first thing that he noticed was the starkness of the scene. Everything was white. Alabaster hued linoleum covered countertops and floor. The man standing at the countertop picking at various items of clothing was wearing a white painter's body suit, which covered him loosely from neck to plastic wrapped feet. On his head was a white painter's cap, with some brown stains spattered across it.

At the far wall, which lay flush against the ones with the water tanks in the gym room was another sort of tank, made out of white ceramic, like a bathtub. Above it, strung up like a slaughtered deer by its hooves, hung a human body, a woman's body. The edges of the bathtub-like tank were too high to see over, but Sano could hear the slow drip of the blood splashing into the liquid in the tank below it.

The female body was naked, its throat slashed, and it had been draining for quite a while, judging by the pallor of the skin.

He should have been shocked, horrified. If he were still human he would be barfing his guts out by now, but all Sano felt was a kind of morbid fascination at the thought of the complete blood supply of one human body dripping into a tank.

He realized that his fangs were out, and glanced over at Battousai to see if he'd had the same reaction, but the redhead wasn't faced his way. Instead, his amber colored eyes were glinting fire at the human standing at the countertop sorting through clothes, a handgun on the counter directly in front of him.

With a start, Sano realized that another body lay under the countertop, wrapped in plastic next to a duffel bag.

"You'll turn around slowly," Battousai growled, his low menacing voice causing Sano's hairs on the back of his neck to stand on end.

The human was no more immune to it than Sano. He started, and whipped around, the pink lacy slip he held in his hand waving like a flag of truce as he turned.

"What?" the human asked, startled.

He glanced at Battousai with a deer in the headlights look, then widened his eyes even more when he glanced over at Sano. Sano took the opportunity to smile his most predatory smile, revealing his fangs.

The human blanched. "V…v…vampires?" he asked. Then a weird look of calculation came into his grey-blue eyes. He dropped the slip. Sano felt his gaze follow it instinctively, even as he registered the fact that the man was moving his hand to the wall over the countertop and flicking a light switch.

Then things moved fast. Sano felt Battousai's arm around his waist, pulling him off his feet and backward. He felt the heels of his feet dragging along the floor and the impact of his back against the water as Battousai dropped him in the bath, and saw an explosion of light against the eyelids that closed automatically when he submerged under the water in the sunken tub.

Even though he no longer breathed, certain human instincts remained. As soon as Sano's back hit the tiled bottom of the tub, he popped to the surface and screamed. As soon as his forehead had cleared the edge of the tub, it seared. Sano plunged back down in the water, hurting and wondering what the hell just happened.

Sunlight burned him, but how? It wasn't anywhere near dawn yet.

Then it clicked.

The tube with the hatch. It was a tanning booth. When the human flicked the switch on the wall, it turned on. Sano thrashed underwater, his arms reaching out to find nothing. So Battousai escaped, shoving Sano into the bath to protect him on his way out of the room.

Sano stilled at the thought. Battousai was still out there. There was a chance of surviving this. He made himself sink like a stone and crouched underwater, his back against the side of the bath.

"Vampire? Hey! Vampire!" The man's voice was shaky but gleeful. "Didn't expect that, did you? Did you want some of my lovely blood? Well you can't have any. I need it all for a very special purpose."

"And what purpose might that be?"

Sano unclenched muscles he hadn't known he'd kept tense at the sound of Battousai's calm voice. From the sound of it, Battousai was in the gym, calling out through the open door. Though muffled by the water, Sano could make out the words.

"Wouldn't you like to know? I've got your friend trapped, you know. You can always just come and get him," he taunted. "No? I guess what they say about sunlight and vampires is true then." He giggled. "You and I have a lot in common."

There was a silence.

"Vampire?" the man's voice called out.

"Vampire?" he called again, this time impatiently. He allowed seconds to tick by then continued, his voice jeering, belligerent.

"All I have to do is wait until morning you know, and then you and your friend are both helpless. Maybe we can make a deal."

Sano heard the scrape of the man's shoes as he walked closer to the tanning booth. Why there? The sound of an opening hatch answered that question as the sunlight above the water got brighter instead of just being diffused through clear plastic. He winced and sunk lower in the water.

"You bring me humans, I drain them, and I give you any excess blood I don't need. How about that?"

Was this guy insane? Bargaining with a vampire like Battousai? Sano wondered what the guy was thinking.

"I do not bargain with murderers." came Battousai's voice coldly.

"It's in a good cause."

There was a rasp of metal, as if something were being pulled off the wall. Sano tried to think what was on the wall by the tanning booth. Kuso!

"Kenshin, it's a mirror!" he shouted, the words coming out distorted and indistinct through the water. The human planned to use a mirror to direct the artificial sunlight at the Battousai.

There was a clang from the gym area, the sound of a sheath hitting a metal tank, but no cry of pain.

"Aw damn," the human sounded as if he'd broken a fingernail. "I thought for sure I'd get you with that one. Oh well, I guess we'll just wait for morning. I've got all night." he finished smugly.

The lights flickered then went out. Sano shot up from the bath, but Battousai beat him to it. A shot was fired. He heard the thud of the bullet landing in the ceiling, then saw a red-headed blur of motion as the Battousai's sword swung, connecting with the gun and knocking it out of the human's hand.

Then the sword was at the human's throat, backing him against the wall.

"You will tell me, now, why it is you kill and take blood. You are no vampire."

The man gurgled in fear, incapable of speech with Battousai's eyes, yellow slits, inches from his own.

"Battousai." Sano noticed the man's hand, red from where the gun was knocked out of it, pointing at something on the countertop. Sano stepped over and moved aside a blue tee shirt to find a book.

The assassin glanced over. "What is it?"

"It's a book. The Biography of Countess Bathory" Sano read the title and wrinkled his brow. "A biography?"

Recognition flared in Battousai's eyes.

"Hey, Kenshin! I mean Battousai." Yahiko's voice preceded him into the room. I pulled the circuit breaker for the downstairs like you wanted me to. Did it work?"

"Yes, Yahiko. Thank you."

"Kenshin?" Sano repeated, bemused by what Yahiko called the Battousai.

Battousai blinked. "It is my human name. Not many know it."

"Oh," said Sano, not sure if he should apologize for having learned it, or swear that he'd forget it as soon as possible.

"Sorry Ken…Battousai." Yahiko apologized glumly.

For a second, violet replaced the angry amber glint in the redhead's eyes as he looked at Sano. "It's alright that Sanosuke knows my true name," he said. "Twice now he has given me valuable information."

Sano grinned. "Guess I have at that." So Battousai heard his strangled yell from underwater.

The assassin turned back to the human, who was still wheezing and sputtering in an attempt to not move his adam's apple against Kenshin's blade.

Yahiko took in the body, the tub, and the book in Sano's hand. "So what's going on here?"

"I believe that this man forces his sister to come down here and bathe in human blood in order to keep herself young and beautiful." Battousai said in a level tone. "The countess Bathory was a medieval madwoman who killed village maidens in order to bathe in their blood for the same purpose."

Sano dropped the book on the counter and grimaced at it in contempt. "What a crock. His poor sister, I bet he keeps her prisoner here and only lets her out to compete in pageants to show off his work."

The human stopped making gurgling noises, and started making other sounds.

Sano realized the man was laughing.

Battousai moved his blade a fraction away from the man's neck. The laughing became more pronounced. The human opened his eyes wide. "Me, force Melissa to do anything? You fools! This was her idea. All of it."

"Where is she?" Battousai growled low in his throat.

"Upstairs," spat the man. "Having her bath."

Sano and Yahiko both glanced over at the ceramic container with the steady drip of the corpse hanging above it. Sano stood up on his tip toes and glanced over the edge. There was only about three inches of blood at the bottom, and a drain he hadn't noticed before was pulling down at the level of liquid in the tub.

"Look." Yahiko pointed to a pipe leading from the bottom of the tub up the wall. "I bet that's how she does it. She pipes the blood upstairs."

Sano frowned. "Yeah, but why not have her bath in here?" he gestured to the sunken pool behind him.

"Because it's too big." Battousai said dully. "It would take too long to fill. Miss Tsubame probably barely even smelled the blood in the small tank down here. She must have smelled the blood upstairs in the bathtub."

Yahiko's eyes got big. "Tsubame! I left her alone." He raced out of the room.

Sano took a step after him, then glanced back at where Battousai kept the giggling man pinned against the wall.

"Go ahead, Sanusoke. Let me know what you find." By the sound of his voice, Battousai already knew what they'd find, and it wasn't good. Sano took off running.

Yahiko was already up the stairs and following the smell of blood to a bathroom on the second floor. By the time Sano followed, Yahiko was inside the bathroom, stopped dead just past the doorway.

There was Tsubame, her face, torso, and arms covered with blood, standing over a crimson filled bathtub, shaking.

Inside the bath, floating face down, was the body of a woman, her blonde curls half escaping from the plastic hairclip at the back of her head.

Tsubame lifted her gaze from the body in front of her and spoke.

"I did it. I killed her," she said, and then dropped to the floor in a dead faint.


	10. Chapter 10

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin characters, I'm just borrowing them for a bit.

Thanks again to everyone who has reviewed – Lolo popoki, Nekotsuki, IKnowNot

CHAPTER TEN

The siren call of blood drew Tsubame up the stairs. She climbed slowly, one step at a time, closer and closer to all that nourishment. Her hand slid along the polished wood of the banister, and Tsubame had the curious feeling that it was the only thing anchoring her to the ground, that if she'd lifted her hand from its tactile connection, she'd float up the stairs.

At the top lay a long carpeted hall extending in either direction, but it was to the right that the blood smell came. Tsubame drifted right, feeling her fangs extend and press into her lower lip without consciously making them do so. Several rooms had light showing under their doors, but only one had the sound of splashing. Only one had the smell of blood.

Turning the knob with a trembling hand, Tsubame pushed the door open. Before her lay a freestanding Victorian claw footed bathtub with a separate shower stand next to it. The stand was stainless steel and had a modern looking hand held shower head attached to it. The spigot on the tub itself was older, made of blackened metal, and from it dripped a trailing stream of red.

The woman in the tub had her back to Tsubame, and was cupping the liquid blood in her hands, and bringing it to her chest to splash over her shoulders. Golden curls were swept off her neck by a brown plastic hairclip.

"Kent? Are you finished already? I told you not to come in here until…"

The woman in the bath turned her head to look over her shoulder and caught sight of Tsubame. Big blue eyes flew open wide, and then resumed a more natural shape as first shock, then calculation entered them. She turned around completely in her bath, allowing the blood level to dip almost completely off her bosom, but Tsubame wasn't interested in the human's breasts. It was the preponderance of blood pooled under them that riveted her.

Noticing, the woman cupped a portion of it in her hand and raised it up to the level of her chin. Her eyes rounded alluringly. "Want some?" she asked in a lilting voice.

Tsubame wrenched her gaze from all that blood and looked at the woman. She was familiar. She was the one they'd been interviewing on the local TV news show; the one Yahiko said had fake breasts.

"You can have all you want, you know. I don't need all of this." Her voice was charming, lulling. The blonde woman spread her fingers and allowed the blood in her hand to drip back into the tub.

"Why?" Tsubame whispered. "Why all this blood if you aren't going to drink it?"

The woman pursed her lips in a mock pout, then leaned back against the white of the bathtub. "For my skin, of course. I don't want to get old and wrinkled until after I've won all the pageants. I'm going to be the most beautiful woman in the world, and everyone is going to admire me." Her voice turned dreamy. "Everyone will look and me and know who I am."

Tsubame remembered what the old man with the dog had said, that this woman and her brother hadn't been allowed out of the house without a chaperone. He'd said that this woman had been a 'looker' and that it was a shame she'd been kept locked away in the house.

Evidently the woman thought it a shame as well, but all Tsubame saw was a colossal ego cloaked in loveliness. Perhaps the great-aunt had seen that too.

"Why are you looking at me that way?" The woman's voice was playful, petulant. "You're a vampire, I can tell by those fangs of yours. Come."

She splashed a wavelet of blood in Tsubame's direction. "Drink your fill. Slake your thirst a bit and then we'll talk."

"Talk?" Tsubame swallowed. The smell of all that blood close up was making her lightheaded.

"About how you're going to help me become Miss Universe, and Miss America, and all the other titles I'm going to rack up." The blonde lunged forward in her bath and crossed her arms on the edge of the tub, leaning her chin on the point where her wrists crossed. "You bring me girls, the younger and prettier the better, drink whatever you need, and I take the rest. My brother Kent will dispose of the bodies so you won't have to. It's the perfect plan."

"You kill for beauty?" Tsubame whispered incredulously.

The woman's eyes, crystalline blue, stared back at her with a slight question. She really had no conception of right or wrong. There wasn't even a pretense of remorse for what she'd done, for all the deaths she'd caused. Nothing mattered to her but winning, and being admired.

Staring into those remorseless, pitiless eyes, Tsubame realized she was looking into the soul of a true monster, and knew what she had to do.

OOO

She woke in the back seat of Sanosuke's car, blood smell on her face, chest, and hands. Even the tips of her hair were coated in it. She was wrapped in towels and lying in Yahiko's lap. When her eyes opened to the sight of the car seat in front of her, Yahiko was just finishing his sentence.

"…sure the police will buy it?"

"Why wouldn't they? Humans are always getting themselves in the news for murder suicides. And they were both nuttier than a fruitcake," came Sano's reply.

"Do not worry, Yahiko." Battousai's voice was calm and even. "I hypnotized the man to write a very convincing suicide note then shoot himself in the head." Tsubame saw him lift a wrist; glance at the watch on it, then let it drop. "He should be doing so now."

Tsubame shuddered slightly, and wiped her mouth against the towel beneath her, feeling Yahiko's knee.

"Hey, you OK?" he asked.

She tried to get up, but his hand gripped her shoulder. "Wait, we're still in traffic. We're almost there."

Blinking she looked at the blood crusted on her hands, and under her fingernails and shuddered again. Of course she couldn't sit up, not looking he way that she did. Tsubame longed for the motel room, or more precisely, for the bathroom. She wanted to scrub the blood off of herself, and felt sick as she flashed back to the woman in the bathtub.

She'd killed her. She'd taken a human life. She'd broken her vow not to harm humans. Tsubame covered her face with her hands and tried not to smell the blood on them, but it was all over her. Pressing her lips together, she wished she could still cry, but tears, like sweat and urine, no longer came.

The car pulled to a stop and over the blood smell she picked up the familiar scents of the motel. Old cigarette smoke, the disinfectants and cleaners from the housekeeping cart, and the dandelions that grew in the crack of the asphalt in front of their room all melded together in the smell that had become home to Tsubame for the past week.

Only the reassuring weight of Yahiko's hand on her shoulder kept Tsubame from ripping through the car door and racing to their motel room.

"I think you should get Miss Tsubame inside as soon as it's clear and get her washed up." Battousai said.

"I will," Yahiko promised, "but what about you?"

"I'll be talking to Sanosuke then leaving."

"So soon?" Tsubame heard the plaintive note in Yahiko's voice, and she felt his disappointment as clearly as if it were her own.

"Hey brat, the Battousai is an important guy. You can't expect him to hang around a Motel 6 in San Jose for the rest of his life." Sano drawled.

"I know that!" Yahiko burst out angrily.

"I'll be in San Francisco for a few more days," Battousai told Yahiko. "My wife is returning from a business trip in Japan. Perhaps if Captain Sagara doesn't need you, you can visit me at the Fairmont Hotel, but for now, take care of Miss Tsubame.

Yahiko's hand tightened gently on her shoulder. "I will," he said again.

The sound of the cleaning cart trundled away as another motel door opened then closed.

Yahiko got out their door key from his pocket, reached across Tsubame, and pushed open the car door. Tsubame reared up to let him out first, then grabbed the bloody towels around her and shot through the motel room door as he opened it. Without pause, she continued on to the bathroom, letting the towels fall to the floor as she threw herself, fully clothed, into the shower and let the blessedly cold water break over her. The shower could only clean away the blood, not the memory of what she'd done, but it would have to do.

OOO

"So, when do you want me to make the anonymous tip?" asked Sano once the younger vampires disappeared into the motel.

"I must go now if I want to make it to San Francisco by dawn. Do it now."

Sano got out his phone and pressed 911.

"You'll have 60 seconds before they can triangulate your position," Kenshin reminded him. "And I assume the phone is in a false name?"

Sano smirked, "Of course." He'd thought Mick E. Mouse was one of his cleverer pseudonyms, but before he could tell Kenshin about it, the operator picked up.

"What is the nature of your emergency?"

"Hey," Sano put a drunken accent on the words, "I was out walking on the golf course by that church on Alder Drive and I heard some shots. You should go check it out. It's that house right by the church. You know, on Alder. Yeah."

Snapping the phone shut, Sano turned to Battousai. "How was that?"

"Good." The red head said simply, and held out his hand. "I will dispose of the phone on my way to the hotel."

Shrugging, Sano handed it over. It's not like he could use it again now that the number was on the police's radar. He watched Kenshin put the phone in his pocket, and suddenly, like Yahiko, he didn't want him to leave.

"Yahiko's going to miss you, you know."

A glint of something, humor? Caring? shone in the vampire's violet blue eyes as he reached for the door handle. "I have a feeling I will be seeing him again soon. Take care of him, Sano."

Sano nodded, and the assassin bowed his head, got out of the car, got into his own rental car and drove away. Leaning back against the headrest, Sano reached up and touched his forehead where he'd tied a strip of cloth over the sunburn that marred him. Yep. It still hurt.

Now he'd have to call Sagara and…wait. He'd just given his phone to Kenshin. Damn. Sighing, Sano turned the key in the ignition and went to go find a payphone.

OOO

Tsubame left her dress hanging over the shower rail to dry. Wrapping a towel securely around her torso, she left the bathroom and walked into the motel room.

"Tsubame."

Yahiko was sitting on the edge of Sano's bed flipping idly through TV channels when she came out of the bathroom. As soon as he saw her, he clicked the TV off and scooted over, making room for her on the edge of the bed, eyes filled with concern.

Hesitantly, she walked over and sat down, staring at the black TV screen. Even with all the blood washed off of her, she could still remember how it felt. She should have been disgusted with the memory, but she wasn't. That scared her more than anything else. Yahiko had been talking, but she'd tuned him out until she felt the palm of his hand on her shoulder, shaking her gently.

"Tsubame? Are you listening to me? Are you OK?"

"Yes," she said softly, and looked over at him. "What did you say again?"

Yahiko looked at her. His brown eyes were the kindest things she'd seen in years. They helped dim the memory of the cold blue eyes of the beautiful beast she'd killed.

The hand he'd used to shake her remained on her bare shoulder, but it turned so that his palm cupped the back of her shoulder. His other hand came up and grasped her other shoulder, turning her so that she faced him squarely.

"I said it's over now. The police will take care of the rest. You don't have to worry about it anymore. You can come home with us to L.A. I'll tell you everything you need to know about being a vampire. I'll make sure you're alright, I promise."

Shaken, Tsubame searched Yahiko's eyes and saw that he was sincere. "Why would you do that for me?"

"I…" Yahiko began, then instead of finishing his sentence, his fingers tightened on her shoulders and he began to lean forward.

It would have been easy for Tsubame to twist away, or to bring an arm up to block him, but a strange lassitude seemed to steal over her. She waited calmly as his lips touched hers. They moved slowly, reverently against her mouth, and she found she'd closed her eyes and softened against him. As the kiss went on, Yahiko's hands moved from her shoulders, to her back, using his arms to hug her protectively without making her feel crushed or imprisoned by them.

Unconsciously, she began to lean in to the kiss, bracing her hands on the coverlet-covered mattress. As she did so, she felt a tugging sensation on the towel at her chest. She realized that the heel of her hand was on the edge of the towel wrapped around her by her legs, and it was pulling the towel loose from where it was tucked around her chest.

Drawing back abruptly, she drew her hands to her bosom, and caught the towel just before it came completely undone. Yahiko's arms dropped away from her.

"I'm sorry!" he yelped. "I shouldn't have…"

"It's OK, I thought the towel…" Tsubame said at the same time.

They stopped and looked at each other.

Yahiko looked away first. He fisted his hands against the coverlet. Taking a deep breath, he seemed to gather his wits together, then let the breath out and spoke, carefully not looking at her.

"You should learn to do that, you know. Lots of vampires use seduction to get blood. If you can't steal blood from a hospital or a blood drive, you need to know how to get a human to give it to you willingly. Either that or hypnotize them so you can take it and they'll forget all about it."

He stood and walked over to the T.V., turning around to look at her, his face carefully blank. "I want you to survive, Tsubame."

He'd pulled away from her when he thought she'd rejected kissing him. It wasn't what Tsubame intended, but it's what happened. She should tell him she didn't need his help. Pushing him away was logical. She wasn't going back to Los Angeles with him, she was returning to the wilds. She ought to tell him that.

Or she could tell him the truth.

She opened her mouth and the words spilled out.

"But I don't want to drink human blood. I don't want to kiss anybody but you."

Ashamed at how forlorn and pitiful the words sounded, Tsubame tucked her chin to her chest and stared down at her hands, clasped together in her lap. The more she was around Yahiko, the more she reverted to the shy girl she'd been before she'd become a vampire. He made her feel weak, and flustered, because it mattered to her desperately what he thought of her. He probably thought she was an utter fool.

"Tsubame." Her name sounded sweet and beautiful when he said it. Concentrating, she tried to decipher the tone in his voice. Was it pity or tenderness that she heard?

She was just raising her head to see Yahiko's expression when the door burst open and Sano wandered in.

"Hey. I talked to Sagara and he wants us to come back to L.A. tomorrow." He stopped midway between the door and the TV and looked back and forth between Yahiko and Tsubame. "What?" he asked, when they didn't respond.

Not getting any satisfaction there, he fell back on familiar tactics. "So Tsubame," he smirked, shoving his hands in his pockets as he leered at her. "That's a new look for you, isn't it?" He nodded at her towel. "Looks good on you."

Tsubame turned her face away and went to go sit at the chair by the window, pointedly ignoring him, and sitting with her back to the room.

"I'm gonna go take a shower." Yahiko's disgusted voice sounded behind her, and she heard the bathroom door slam.

"Geez, everybody's so touchy today." Sano grumped and soon the strains of a game show theme song lilted through the room.

Tsubame sat quietly, ignoring him, and made her plans.


	11. Chapter 11

Disclaimer: I don't own Rurouni Kenshin.

Note: Response to Reviewers at the end of the chapter

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Yahiko woke up to an empty space on the bed next to him. How did Tsubame do it? She always seemed to be up before he was. He lifted his chin and heard the shower running in the bathroom. She was washing again, poor kid. She'd really freaked out about all that blood on her.

"Hey Yahiko, your girlfriend better not take too long in the shower. We've got to get going." Sano's voice called across from the other bed.

Yahiko sat up abruptly. "She's NOT my girlfriend!" he yelled back, and was surprised by the rush of disappointment that accompanied his words.

Sano smirked, and made another smart aleck remark, and the argument was on. As they argued, Yahiko and Sano dumped their belongings into their bags, and waited for Tsubame to finish up.

Ten minutes passed. Fifteen.

"Hey Missy, how much longer are you going to be in there?" Sano hollered through the bathroom door, knocking on it with the back of his hand.

No answer.

Yahiko came over. "Tsubame?" he called out questioningly.

Nothing.

Exchanging a look, Yahiko and Sano pushed the door open together. The bathroom was empty. The shower ran on, unoccupied. Yahiko moved to it automatically and shut it off, drenching his sleeve in the process. He turned around to find Sano picking up a piece of paper lying on the countertop by the sink.

"What's it say?"

Ignoring him, the taller vampire simply held the paper up high, at the level of his forehead, eyes scanning quickly over the handwritten lines.

"Sano!" snarled Yahiko, grabbing the arm nearest him and yanking it. He hated it when Sanosuke used his height to his advantage.

Sano let the hand holding the paper drop and handed it over tamely.

"Huh?" Yahiko recovered quickly from his surprise at the capitulation and yanked it out of Sano's hand.

"It's for you." There was an odd expression in Sano's eyes. He stepped back, turned, and left the bathroom, closing the door behind him.

The paper was cream colored and had the Motel 6 logo at the top. It was one of those 'complementary letterhead' papers you found in drawers of hotels. On it Tsubame had written:

Dear Yahiko,

You don't need me anymore so I'm leaving. Please don't try to follow me. Thank you for your offer to help me, but I can't accept it. I don't want to be what I am now. I never did, and if the only way I can survive in your world is the way you said, then I'd rather be dead. I won't prostitute myself in order to live. Please understand, and leave me alone.

-Tsubame

"Idiot." Yahiko called himself. "Lunkhead. Moron. Retard."

How could he have been such a fool, telling her she had to seduce humans to survive? No wonder she'd run away. Nice girls like Tsubame didn't go around having sex with anyone who wanted them. And she was a nice girl, Yahiko was certain of it, even though that idiot rooster head kept saying she was feral.

Yahiko groaned, and clenched the paper in his hands. He'd ruined everything when he scared her by kissing her and tried to cover for it, pretending he'd just been teaching her a survival tactic.

"I'm going after her," Yahiko announced, shoving open the bathroom door and striding over to the bed where he'd left his duffel bag. Then he yelped as Sano grabbed the collar at the back of his shirt and yanked him away from the bed.

"No, you're not. Something's going down in Los Angeles soon, and Captain Sagara ordered us back, so that's where we're going."

Yahiko reached back and pulled the cloth out of Sano's hand, whirled around and glared.

Sano met his angry stare calmly. "You really want to disobey the captain?"

Grinding his teeth together, Yahiko dropped his gaze to the floor. He'd sworn an oath of loyalty to Captain Sagara, just like Sano had. In return, Sagara protected him and the other vampires in his band. There's strength in numbers. Vampires learned that over the centuries and now it was rare to find vampires who survived on their own without affiliation to a group. Battousai was a very rare exception.

"No." Yahiko grudgingly admitted, and waited for Sano to make some stupid, teasing remark.

It never came.

"Then let's go." Yahiko looked up and saw Sano, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, walking out the door.

OOO

The first thing Yahiko noticed when he pulled into the parking lot of the abandoned warehouse Sagara used as his headquarters, was the number of cars already parked there. The warehouse was in a really bad part of town, an industrial area gone to pot. It was a squat, grey concrete building with dirty, broken windows.

The next thing Yahiko noticed were the two battered steel doors up the concrete steps. They were hanging open. He parked his Cadillac next to Winston's blue truck with the camper shell on the back, and got out of his car.

A noise at the rusted chain link gateway caught his attention. It was Sano, pulling in. Yahiko stifled a smirk. He'd told that rooster head to take the other exit time after time, but Sano insisted his favorite one was faster.

Seeing him, Sano pulled up next to him and got out. Immediately, his eyes went to the open doors up a small flight of concrete steps.

The expression on his face stilled Yahiko's gloating comment.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Sano looked at him. "When I called Sagara before, he said he thought something might be going down tonight."

"What? So soon?"

Yahiko tried to stay out of the politics. He followed Sagara's orders, and came when called, but his work as an assistant kendo instructor at a local dojo kept him busy. The human who ran it was a friend, and didn't mind when Yahiko took off and left him with the evening classes. Yahiko liked the routine of kendo, though for real conflicts, he preferred his katana or his wakizashi.

Sano reached behind his back and pulled out a gun tucked in his belt under his shirt. Seeing it, Yahiko opened his car door, leaned in, and grabbed his wakizashi. He knew Sano preferred the wood tipped bullets, but Yahiko would rather take his chances with a blade.

Without another word, Sano slipped quietly up the concrete steps and leaned in by the open metal doors, listening. Yahiko followed, blade unsheathed and up by his shoulders, ready to slash down when needed.

Concentrating, Yahiko heard what Sano did, faint voices from inside. They crept inside to what Sagara laughingly called the reception area. The smell of waste and chemicals in half rotted away metal drums would knock a regular human on his rear. They barely noticed the familiar smell as they crept through the bits of rusted machinery Sagara left there coated with dust to make the warehouse look abandoned. There were nicks in the machinery where the metal under the rust had been exposed by slashes or bullet holes.

The pressure pads of Sagara's security system were still in place. Vampires in his group knew where to and not to step to get to the cellar doors that led to the true headquarters.

Sano and Yahiko noticed them and and exchanged a look. The cellar doors were wide open. Piles of clothing lay about the opening, with the dust of decomposing vampire flesh still inside.

Coming out from behind the shadows of an interior girder, Sano made his way to the stairs and walked down them, gun clasped in his hands, pointed forward. Yahiko followed quietly, moving aside to avoid stepping on the piles of dusty clothes.

There were so many of them.

The stairs down opened up into a hallway with doors on either side. The doors were window dressing. The rooms behind them weren't used for anything, but the attackers hadn't known that. Doors hung drunkenly off hinges, or lay inside the empty rooms where they'd been kicked inward. Sano checked out each one, but there was nothing there.

Finally, they made it to the last door on the left, the true entrance. Just as Sano prepared to kick it open, it swung inward on its own.

He stepped back and aimed his gun at the center of the doorway. Without being told, Yahiko hugged the wall to the left of the opening, blade lifted above his head, ready to slice downward.

"Sano?"

It was Keisuke's voice.

Sano lowered his gun, but Yahiko stayed put until the large vampire actually stepped out of the doorway. Seeing the distinctive, bushy sideburns, he relaxed his arms and let his blade lower to rest, tip down, at his side.

"What happened?"

Keisuke acknowledged Yahiko's presence with a glance, then crossed his arms and answered Sano. "We were attacked. Sagara got word ahead of time, so we were ready, but…"

Sano grimaced. "Was it the Meiji?"

"No."

Yahiko breathed a sigh of relief as Sagara came into view, his dark eyes lingering over Sano and Yahiko as if checking for wounds. His gaze stopped at the band of cloth Sano had tied around his forehead, and his eyes tilted inquiringly.

Sano put a hand up absently to touch the burned area. "Why didn't you call me?" he asked accusingly.

"We were a little busy here," Keisuke answered.

Sano opened his mouth to retort, but Sagara lifted a hand to stop him. "The Meiji didn't do this, Sano. It was the Tokugawa."

"The Tokugawa? But I thought they were in Japan!" burst out Yahiko.

Sagara's eyes lit on him. "Yes, Yahiko, they are. But like most groups, they are eager to expand their territory. They planned to do what the Meiji did, and come here."

"So they're copying the Meiji's tactics, huh? A surprise attack like there was ten years ago, the dirty swine." Sano's anger came through his voice loud and clear.

"It was the Meiji who warned us of this attack." Sagara said simply.

"What?" Sano unconsciously gripped his gun tighter.

"You're behind the times." Keisuke told him as he leaned back against the doorframe.

"I've spoken to Katsura. There was a traitor in the Meiji organization. It was he who ordered the attack ten years ago without Katsura's knowledge. By the time Katsura returned from Sacramento, the attack was already started. He couldn't stop it, but he could and did pull his forces back at the first opportunity."

"What traitor?" Sano's voice went cold.

"Izuka, a vampire who'd been with Katsura since his human days. Katsura thinks he may have been in the pay of the real Tokugawa bakufu even then. It was Izuka who sent us the false cry for help with the serial killer, then told Katsura that the killer was one of ours, sent to cause problems for his group up North. He planned to let the Tokugawa group wipe us out while our strongest warriors were up chasing the serial killer, then get Katsura to come after my best and strongest for encroaching on Meiji territory without permission. With the Sekihoutai out of the way, the Tokugawa planned to move on the Meiji next."

"How'd Katsura find out Izuka was the traitor?" Yahiko asked.

'Katsura has his own ways of getting information. Just as there are vampires who work as assassins, there are others who work as informants."

"Where's Izuka now?" Sano asked, eyes glinting with hatred.

"Arrangements have already been made." Sagara told him.

"But…"

"Katsura promised me, Izuka will not live out the week. He already has someone on it."

Sano cursed softly and glared his disappointment at the floor. Yahiko drifted over to his side. Sano lost his best friend, Katsu in the war ten years ago. Even though the big rooster head was an idiot, Yahiko didn't want him to do anything stupid like rebelling against Sagara and going after Izuka on his own. Just as he reached Sano's side, the taller vampire lifted his head and spoke.

"I hope this doesn't mean that we're best friends with the Meiji now," he said, a dark humor in his voice.

Sagara shook his head. "No. The past cannot be entirely forgotten. The Sekihoutai and the Meiji will remain separate, Katsura and I both agree on that. But if the Tokugawa ever attacks again, we will fight them, separately if possible, but together if need be. Right now we maintain a balance in California. Lose either group, and the other becomes easy prey for the Tokugawa."

Sano nodded grudgingly, then got back to the topic at hand. "How many did we lose?"

Sagara bowed his head, and told him.

OOO

There wasn't much time left until dawn, so Yahiko stayed at headquarters to sleep. The next evening, he helped clean out the evidence of battle. The Tokugawa remains were thrown in a dumpster down the street. The remains of the Sekihoutai were placed in urns to be secretly buried in a Buddhist cemetery outside of town. Yuji, the vampire who'd loved to tease Yahiko for being the youngest, was gone, as was his friend Tetsu, and Winston. Now Yahiko would never have a chance to ask again what it was like when California was part of the Wild West, and gold miners roamed the hills. If only he'd had a few more years, he could have worn the vampire down, and got him to talk.

But there were no more years for Winston, or for the other Sekihoutai members who'd died defending their captain and the territory they'd carved out for themselves. Yahiko realized, seeing the grief in the faces of his fellow Sekihoutai, that despite having lived long after their allotted human span of years, vampires (like humans) felt that there was never enough time to do all the things you wanted or to say all the things you meant to say. Death was ever a robber who came to take that which was most precious to you.

Captain Sagara immediately began looking for a new headquarters, a place to keep the organization's records, and a place for the Sekihoutai to assemble and defend in case of emergencies. Within a week, he sent word that he'd rented an old office building with an underground parking garage – a perfect place to build the new headquarters.

The evening of the move, Yahiko found himself at the old warehouse, and joined in carrying boxes to the moving trucks Sagara had rented. He felt restless back in his old life of teaching kendo classes in the evening, and roaming around the city late at night. He'd always been a city boy, but all of a sudden the smog and relentless garish lights were getting to him. His apartment, one of the cheaper studio ones in the building next to Sano's, seemed too small and empty. It felt constricting, which is why he volunteered on the spot to help in the move. He told himself it was just to try to feel connected with the remaining Sekihoutai, the ones who still lived.

Ferrying boxes to the new building gave him a sense of purpose. The lowest floor of the parking garage was already being carpeted and room partitions were in place. It was going to be a maze of corridors and rooms, designed to confuse intruders. Sagara was smart that way.

"…figure Tsubame's got a year maybe, before she's completely feral."

Sano's voice drifted out from one of the open doorways. Yahiko, carrying a box through the hallway outside the newly constructed room, opened his mouth angrily, and prepared to rush in to give the rooster head a few choice words when Sagara's voice answered Sano.

"If she did drink human blood for the first time last week, and she's been a vampire ten years before that, she may not have a whole year. She was already well on her way to becoming a true feral. The stories say that once a vampire tastes human blood then rejects it in favor of animal blood, the process accelerates."

Yahiko stopped dead in his tracks, holding a box of files and staring straight in front of him. An image came to him of Tsubame, her arms and face covered in blood, standing behind a bathtub full of it. Her first taste of blood came from an overwhelming quantity. He remembered how the smell and sight of it had affected him, and he'd even drunk recently. The box rustled in front of him and he saw that his hands were shaking.

"So what do you want to do about it?" Sano's voice asked reluctantly.

"She'll have to be killed."

Yahiko felt as if he'd been punched. That couldn't be Captain Sagara's voice saying that. The captain he'd sworn an oath of loyalty to, a vampire he admired almost as much as he did Battousai, couldn't be that unfair. Tsubame helped find the serial killer. She'd done everything they'd asked her to do. No, everything Yahiko asked her to. He'd got her into this. He had to get her out.

Yahiko bent and gently placed the box on the floor. Kneeling beside it, he continued to listen in to the conversation.

The silence in the room trailed on. Yahiko wished that Sano would say something to defend Tsubame, but he knew the older vampire blamed her for Katsu's death. Sano eventually replied, as Yahiko knew he would.

"I'll do it. She knows me; I can get close to her. At least with me, it'll be quick."

"No." Sagara's denial came firmly. "Your relationship with Yahiko would be harmed by this. I'll ask an outsider to do it. I'll call Battousai tomorrow. I believe he's still in San Francisco."

"What about Yahiko?" Was that concern in Sano's voice? Yahiko listened wide-eyed.

"I will inform him." Sagara replied calmly. "It is my decision."

"Doesn't sound like you." Sano's voice came speculatively.

"No. It was a joint decision. It was one of the things Katsura and I discussed. Though the human serial killer has been disposed of, having a feral vampire roaming free is still a danger to us all. Since Tsubame came from our territory, Katsura agreed that it was our responsibility to take care of the matter."

"Yahiko won't take it well." Sano warned.

"I know. He will blame me, and may do something rash. I trust that as his friend, Sano, you'll help him through it."

"Yeah," Sano's agreement came softly. "It really sucks, though."

There was another silence, and then Sagara said, "We need to discuss who will replace Yuji and Tetsu as leaders on the team."

As Sano and Sagara started throwing out various names, Yahiko concentrated on being as quiet as possible as he inched his way back down the hallway. Once he got to the end of it, he walked quickly to the stairs, caught a ride on a moving truck going back to the warehouse, and retrieved his car. Within minutes he was on the freeway and on his way back up North. He had to stop Battousai from killing Tsubame. He didn't know how, but he had to try.

OOO

Yahiko left his wakizashi locked in his car and walked from the parking lot to the lobby of the Fairmont Hotel. It's not as if it would do him any good against the Battousai, against Kenshin, anyhow. Kenshin moved faster than the eye could track him. When he'd killed the man who'd shot Yahiko all those years ago, he'd just been a blur. As much as Yahiko had practiced and improved since becoming a vampire, he still wouldn't stand a chance against the professional assassin. He'd have to use words instead.

He'd driven like a madman to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco, but with the traffic and the long summer daylight hours and proportionally shorter nights he'd had to stop the night before at a motel.

The next evening he made it to the Fairmont Hotel, hoping against hope that Kenshin hadn't left for the national park yet.

The Fairmont's lobby was vast and intimidating. Huge columns of gold and burgundy mottled marble rose up to a two storey tall ceiling. Backless sofas that looked like something Cleopatra would have lounged on were scattered in tasteful groupings along with overstuffed upholstered chairs around curving oriental rugs that accented rather than merely covered the marble floor. A massive staircase with intricate dark wrought iron banister and side panels swept towards an upper floor. Yahiko glanced around, gulped, then made his way to the front desk.

"I'd like to see Mr. Himura please. Kenshin Himura?" This was too important to let go. If he had to hypnotize the pleasant faced middle-aged woman in the concierge's uniform to find out the room number, he would.

He didn't have to. She'd already been hypnotized. He could tell by the instantaneous glazed look she got in her eye the second he said Kenshin's name.

"Of course, Mr. Myojin. Mr. Himura is in room 508. He's expecting you."

Disdaining the marble staircase, Yahiko took the elevator to level five and found himself in front of room 508, knocking sharply on the door.

It opened the moment he took his knuckles off the wood. There was Kenshin, dressed in a dark blue kimono with his hair tied back in a ponytail. In his right hand he held the sheath of his sword. Glancing over the redhead's shoulder into the sitting room area, Yahiko saw Kenshin's sword, disassembled for cleaning, lying on a towel on the coffee table, which separated two small sofas.

Kenshin was cleaning his sword. Yahiko's heart sank.

"Come in, Yahiko. I've been expecting you."

Yahiko stomped past and dropped down on the sofa furthest from the door. Kenshin followed and sat across from him, laying the sheath across his knees. Yahiko stared at him accusingly.

"You know why I've come here, don't you? You know what Captain Sagara wants to do to Tsubame." Yahiko burst out challengingly. "It's not fair! She helped us and now Captain Sagara and Katsura both want her dead. You saw her! She's not dangerous. She's brave, and good. How can you kill her?"

The red headed assassin lifted the plain blue metal sheath from his lap and began to polish it in smooth even strokes with a soft cloth. Eyes on his work, he spoke softly. "I did not accept the job of killing Tsubame, Yahiko. I refused it. I do not know who they plan to send to execute her."

Relief washed over Yahiko. His shoulders sagged. Tsubame was safe for now. She could fight off most vampires, but not the Battousai. However, there were still a lot of problems.

Yahiko was a member of Captain Sagara's group. The captain wanted Tsubame killed, and would probably send one of his own to go get her. Since Yahiko purposely left his cell phone back in Los Angeles, Sagara couldn't order him to do it, but he could order anyone else from the Sekihoutai to kill her. Even Sano.

"Kenshin…what should I do?" Yahiko felt like his life was skittering completely out of control. He owed Sagara his loyalty and obedience, and yet…

"What do you feel for this girl?" Kenshin's hands continued to move in confident circles over the sheath, his eyes watching for any nicks or dents as he polished.

Yahiko gaped. He was looking for answers, not questions. "What do you mean?"

Kenshin's hands paused momentarily and he shot a hard look with glints of amber at Yahiko out from under his crimson bangs. "What are your feelings towards Tsubame?"

What did he feel about her? "I…I like her." The words felt right, so Yahiko continued more confidently. "I like her a lot, and I don't think it's fair to…"

"Forget fair." Kenshin broke in harshly. "There is no 'fair' in life or in the existence we have now. I'm not asking about her situation, I'm asking how you feel about her and what you intend to do about it."

Brown eyes met amber tinted violet ones steadily. Kenshin's hands stilled on the sheath. He sat motionless, his whole attention on Yahiko, waiting.

"I love her." Yahiko admitted at last. "I love her and I want to protect her no matter what, but I don't know how."

It was true. The most important thing in his world right now was Tsubame, and keeping her safe. The question was, how long could he and she run, with who knows how many assassins chasing after them? Where could they go? While Yahiko mused, a curious thing happened.

Kenshin began to smile, the expression breaking slowly across his features like the dawn across a still lake. It lightened the angry gold glints in his eyes to a gentle blue violet, and softened the hard, dignified contours of his face.

Yahiko gaped, and felt his mouth literally drop open in surprise.

"What is it?" Kenshin asked, amused at Yahiko's expression.

"You're smiling. I've never seen you smile before."

Kenshin's smile widened as the door handle on the door behind him turned. "You've never met my wife Tomoe before either, have you?" he asked rhetorically, setting the sheath down and rising to his feet. He shifted slightly and directed his smile's warmth to the woman entering through the doorway.

"Anata," she greeted him, an answering warmth in the quiet smile she directed toward her husband.

Yahiko found himself gaping again. Tomoe was beautiful. She had a milky white complexion like the finest porcelain. Jet-black hair fell about her shoulders, with a few shorter wisps framing her face. She wore modern style clothes, a black skirt with a fitted suit jacket over the palest of pink silk blouses, but she moved into the room with an old fashioned grace. Yahiko wouldn't have been surprised in the least to see that she floated instead of walked on the ground like mere mortals or vampires.

She moved forward and came to stand quietly at her husband's side, her almond shaped eyes regarding Yahiko with a steady curiosity.

Kenshin turned back to him. "Wanting to protect those who are dear to us is what keeps the last vestiges of humanity alive in us, Yahiko. Not drinking human blood once a month. I'm going to tell you a secret few vampires know." He took his wife's hand and clasped it. Yahiko noticed that Tomoe's fingers curled gently around Kensin's as he continued. "What you must do is…"

OOO

Tsubame inhaled so that she could take in the woodsy scent of the trees and the wildlife that nestled in their branches. She'd fed yesterday, but it didn't hurt to map out where her prey lived.

A slight tingling sensation in her stomach alerted her to the presence of another vampire. She turned her head and inhaled again. It was Yahiko.

Dropping from the tree branch she'd been standing on, Tsubame touched down to earth with bent knees, and straightened them to stand upright, facing in the direction Yahiko was coming. Why was he here? She'd said everything there was to say in her letter.

For a second she considered running. She was good at it. But Yahiko was a vampire like her, and could sense her presence if he got close enough. She hadn't been able to shake him before.

The tree branches laced together above her cut out the starlight and left her in shadows. She wanted to see Yahiko's face again, without shadow.

Turning, Tsubame began to walk toward the edge of the forested hill she was on. Sometime in the past, the stream running next to it had eroded away a large portion of it. At the drop-off point, the trees thinned. She emerged from the trees and stepped to the edge.

Clusters of ferns and wild violets grouped around the reddish brown trunks at her back. Before her, across the drop, were the tree trunks and lacey green branches of the rest of the forest. A small stream gurgled low in the streambed below, and Tsubame amused herself counting the boulders protruding from the middle and sides of the rushing waters, her mind already formulating an escape plan and figuring which ones were safe to step on.

The ferns brushed against Yahiko's clothes. She heard the dry susurration of plant against fabric. Turning slowly, she saw him, standing just outside the forest shadows.

His face was exactly as she'd remembered it – warm brown eyes with pleasant, confidant features, and spiky-looking short brown hair.

His wakizashi was strapped to his back over his plaid flannel shirt, left open over a white t-shirt and jeans. He was dressed like a hiker, except for his hand, for he had it fisted around a small black box. He looked really good.

"Tsubame?"

She thought the way her name sounded in his mouth wouldn't sound as good once time and distance had separated them for a while, but it still made her melt inside.

"Yes?"

Relief flashed over his face. Did he think she'd reject him? Or try to kill him again?

He walked forward, stopping about a foot away. "You're still you." He said simply. "They said once you'd drunk human blood then were away from it, you'd go crazy faster."

Tsubame frowned. "What makes you think I drank human blood?"

Yahiko blinked. "That woman, Melissa Murphy, you killed her, didn't you?"

Nodding, Tsubame explained. "I pushed her under the blood and drowned her in it. I couldn't let her live, not after she'd killed so many people. I've never killed anyone before."

Yahiko's eyes widened. "You didn't drink any of it?"

Tsubame shook her head.

A big smile pasted itself across Yahiko's face. Tsubame found herself entranced by the way it warmed the expression in his eyes. She could watch those eyes of his forever and still feel she hadn't captured every expression, every bit of the brave, determined, laughing, quarrelsome, irresistible boy that she'd come to know so well.

He reached out and grabbed her hand. "Sit with me," he commanded, and sank down to his knees, dragging her gently down with him so that they both knelt across from each other, the tree line on their left, and the stream below on their right.

"There's something I have to tell you, and ask you. Just don't talk or anything until you hear me out, OK?"

He looked so earnest. Whatever it was obviously was important to him, so Tsubame nodded back, and kept her hand in his.

"I found out there's a way for you to survive without human blood. It's kind of a miracle you've made it for so long without going feral, but even if you didn't drink Melissa Murphy's blood, eventually you're going to forget how to talk, and attack anything that comes near you." He searched her face, as if trying to see from her expression that she understood.

Tsubame blinked, and thought back to the way she'd reacted the first time she met Yahiko. It had taken her brain a while to remember talking. Her body had identified him as a threat, and acted on instinct, ready to kill without finding out anything about him. The only reason she hadn't attacked any humans is because she'd trained herself to stay away from them.

Being with Yahiko and Sano had brought her back to something approaching normal, but since she'd been away from them, she could feel the call of the savage wilderness, and had been steadily surrendering to it.

"I know." she admitted. "I feel it, but what else can I do?"

Yahiko's hand tightened on hers. "There's a way out. Kenshin told me about it. His wife Tomoe is like you. She'll kill other vampires if she has to, but she won't kill humans and she hates to drink their blood. So she feeds off Kenshin right after he's drunk. The human blood in him gets transferred to her that way. I want to do that for you. Kenshin said he'd square it with Sagara and Katsura. Let me do this."

"But, humans still get hurt, Yahiko."

He was already shaking his head in negation before she finished speaking. "Not if I only drink donated blood. Heck, I already only drink Red Cross rejects. That whole club scene and picking up suppliers got real old real fast. Those people are weird. And what you said to me before? That goes for me too."

Reeling from the information, Tsubame picked up on Yahiko's last sentences. "What I said before?"

Yahiko stared at her intently. "I only want to kiss you, too."

He dropped her hand and used it to open the small box in his other palm.

Starlight twinkled on the diamond ring inside it. "Marry me, Tsubame. Marry me and come back to L.A., or I'll move here. Wherever. I don't care, I just want to be with you."

Tsubame looked at the ring, looked up at Yahiko, and looked back down at the ring in shock. Of all the things she'd thought he'd come to tell her, she never would have guessed this.

"Can vampires get married?" she heard herself ask dazedly. "I thought we weren't allowed in churches."

"Naw. We can go in, we just have to stay away from the crosses, and we aren't allowed to kill anyone, vampire or human, in them. It's a deal we made with the Catholics a long time ago."

She'd glanced up at him to hear his answer, and saw that he was watching her hopefully as he continued to hold the box with the ring in it between them. "So. What do you say? Will you marry me?"

"Yes."

Surprising herself, and Yahiko, Tsubame threw herself against his chest and wrapped her arms around his back. She would never have been so forward back in her human life. Perhaps she really was going feral, but she didn't care. In his arms was where she most wanted to be.

She heard the box drop on the grass and roll off the edge as Yahiko copied her gesture and put his arms around her back. She loved the way he held her, like she was his most precious, delicate possession, and not a bloodthirsty creature of the night.

He moved back a little and she moved her head back to look up at him, still cradled against his chest. Then he shifted his face closer to hers, and kissed her gently at first, then passionately, possessively.

If Tsubame were still breathing, it would have taken her breath away. As it was, she felt a little dizzy when Yahiko finally raised his head and smiled down at her, smugness warring with tenderness in his eyes.

"I think I dropped the ring down into the stream," he said.

Tsubame laughed back up at him, and raised her hand to touch his cheek. "I know. I heard it fall." And knew precisely which boulder it landed on, judging by the length of time it fell and the sound it made when it landed.

He captured her hand against his cheek and moved it down to his mouth so he could kiss its palm. "You're beautiful when you laugh, you know."

Tsubame smiled, then felt her smile fading into seriousness as she continued to look in the face of the only love she'd ever known. He was all that mattered, and the way he was looking back at her made her feel things she'd never felt before. All those clichés from romance novels suddenly made sense.

"What about the ring?" she asked. "Shouldn't we go find it?"

He hadn't even put it on her finger yet, and suddenly she wanted it, the symbol that he'd claimed her, that he wanted to spend his eternity with her. She wanted to look down at her hand and see it there every evening when they woke.

"Later," murmured Yahiko, and bent his head to hers again.

OOO

Sano sprawled in a big leather chair in Sagara's new office. The captain had just turned on the large flat screen TV set in the bookcase of the far wall. A news program was playing.

"And in other news today, the last of eighteen total bodies, the work of the bloodbath killer, was discovered in the Sequoia National Forest by a police volunteer. The body, which had been there several months, was badly decomposed. The police have done an excellent job finding these last victims, and search crews say they've never had as much success before, and are considering sending search teams out in single crews rather than in pairs more often, since the last bodies were discovered by single searchers out in the forest alone. On a more somber note, forest rangers in the same area are reporting a rash of anemia in animals found in the Sequoias lately, and sources speculate that some new disease that attacks animal blood cells may be present in Northern California…"

Sagara clicked the remote and shut the news off.

"Looks like Yahiko's doing well." Sano observed lazily.

"Yes, though I wish he'd ask before hypnotizing policemen to find buried corpses." Sagara didn't sound terribly put out by it though. Sano thought that the captain had to secretly admire Yahiko for using Tsubame's bloodhound-like senses to find the last remains of Kent and Melissa Murphy's victims. Then to hypnotize the searchers so they'd find the bodies and bring an end to their families' suffering…Sano was kind of proud of the kid.

"He did abandon the Sekihoutai." Sano observed casually. "Some would say he's cut off all ties. Some vampire groups kill for that kind of disloyalty."

Sagara regarded Sano steadily. "You know me better than that."

"What are you going to do? The others have started asking about Yahiko. We lost a lot of our group. They're protective about the ones we have left."

And if they thought Yahiko, like Izuka, was a spy…Sano didn't want to think about what they'd do to him. Sagara needed to do something soon.

Setting the remote control down on the desk, Sagara leaned back in his chair. "Katsura has been asking about a liaison between our two groups, someone from our side who'd be willing to live up there and relay messages. Someone we both trust. I think Yahiko would do for the job."

Sano smiled, reassured. Of course Sagara had a plan. "Maybe the little brat's ready for more responsibility. But you might have to wait until he gets back."

"Gets back?" Sagara's eyes narrowed inquiringly.

Sano pulled a postcard out of his pocket. It was a picture of two bears, one with a top hat tied to its head, and the other with a lopsided bridal veil, attempting to eat the bouquet of flowers in its hand. He tossed it on the desk in front of Sagara.

"Gets back from his honeymoon." Sano smiled, and had the rare opportunity to see Sagara's eyebrows shoot up to his hairline in surprise as he read the message Yahiko had written.

"Dear Sano,

I'm married now; so don't be calling me a brat anymore. I know Kenshin called Sagara and told him about Tsubame and me. You can tell him from me, feral isn't all that bad. See you when we get back from our honeymoon.

- Yahiko

THE END

A/N: Apologies to Kenshin/Kaoru fans, but in an alternate universe an author is allowed to rewrite history, and frankly I thought Tomoe's early demise in the OAV was tragic and heartrending. So in my story she gets to live on with Kenshin, keeping that little spark of humanity alive in him, as he does in her by shielding her from the need to kill. Sorry too for the silly sentimental glop at the end – writing romance does not come easily for me.

Note to Reviewers:

Zoleth – Thanks so much for reviewing, and especially for calling my story 'original'.

Lolo popoki – Yeah, he's married to Tomoe. I just couldn't resist letting her have a happy ending.

XkenKao12x – I actually can't draw worth beans – my brother ended up with all the artistic genes in my family – so I didn't draw the RK vampire manga, but I'd love to see it. Where can I find it?

Nekotsuki – Glad I didn't gross you out too much on the 'disgusting revelation'. Bathing in blood is creepy, but I tried to keep the descriptions to a bare minimum. Thanks for all your encouragement!


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